66 
tercolonial and international in its charac- 
ter and influence. 
Kew Garden is involved in the history of 
English royalty, for not only is it situated 
in the heart of historic England, but itself 
forms a part of that history, being one of 
that royal series of palaces and parks that 
from time to time have bordered the Thames 
from Windsor to Westminster and have 
made the very region historic. Of this 
series, Kew with its gardens has been gradu- 
ally given to the nation by the crown. 
Westminster ceased to be a royal residence 
with the bluff King Hal and his tender but 
well-beloved son ; the glories of Richmond 
Palace as a royal residence ended with the 
giddy but brilliant Virgin Queen, and to- 
day only a vestige remains of Richmond’s 
former greatness; Hampton Court flour- 
ished with Queen Anne and William and 
Mary ; Kew’s brief period closed with the 
decadence of the third Georgian reign, when 
the poor king, bereft of his colonies and 
finally stricken with disordered mind, was 
kept here in retirement during the long 
regency; of all the series, Windsor alone, 
oldest of all, remains a royal residence. 
While the public Kew Garden has been 
established for less than sixty years, the 
real existence of Kew as a royal botanic 
garden dates back to the days of the good 
Princess Augusta, widow of Frederick, 
Prince of Wales, son of George the Second, 
and for a long period prior to this a 
large number of plants from various parts 
of the world had been under cultivation, and 
the whole area now occupied by the garden 
and arboretum was a private royal park with 
an abundance of native and cultivated 
trees; even in the time of Charles the 
Second the collection of plants was so con- 
siderable as to attract much attention, and 
Kew was regarded as one of the finest gar- 
dens in the British Isles. Erasmus Darwin, 
grandfather of the famous naturalist, sung 
its praises in his day : 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. X. No. 238. 
“*So sits enthroned in vegetable pride 
Imperial Kew, by Thames’ glittering side ; 
Obedient sails from realms unfurrowed bring 
For her the unnamed progeny of Spring.”’ 
Soon after 1760 the Princess Augusta, 
mother of George the Third, with the influ- 
ence of Lord Bute, himself a botanist of 
some note, called William Aiton, a Scottish 
gardener botanist, to take charge of the 
botanic garden. Every botanist is familiar 
with the Hortus Kewensis, which Aiton pub- 
lished in 1789, in which he gave an ac- 
count of all the 5,500 species of plants grow- 
ing at Kew, some of which had never be- 
fore been described; among these were a 
considerable number of our common Amer- 
ican wild flowers and ferns, including some 
of our common violets and trilliums.* The 
great number of species of plants described 
in this work gives some clue to the early 
growth of Kew Gardens, but within the 
twenty-five years following Aiton’s publi- 
cation the activity in securing new plants 
was so great that this number was doubled. 
On the accession of the present sovereign, 
the purpose of opening the gardens to the 
public was carried into execution, and in 
1841, Sir William Hooker, a distinguished 
botanist from Edinburgh, was called to the 
post of Director, and the gardens were pre- 
sented to the nation. 
Only a small part of the present area— 
that immediately surrounding the present 
Temple of the Sun—formed the original 
public garden, but gradually more and more 
passed over to the nation until now some 
250 acres are included in the public garden, 
embracing all the former royal park at 
Kew except the immediate surroundings of 
Kew Palace and the wild woods immedi- 
*This must not be confused with the earlier Hor- 
tus Kewensis of Hill, published in 1768, nor the sec- 
ond edition published by Aiton’s son in 1813. Hill’s 
catalogue named 488 hardy trees and shrubs, some 
200 tender shrubs and over 2,700 herbaceous plants. 
In 1814 the total number of plants under cultivation 
exceeded 11,000. 
