68 
lic gaze from more than mere glimpses of 
the beautiful flower gardens of England 
and render the abrupt brick fronts of the 
houses more ugly than ever to one accus- 
tomed to anything better in the direction 
of more tasteful architecture. Here, how- 
ever, the wall is higher than usual, but, 
fortunately, lacks the usual European gar- 
con-de-frieze of broken bottles and window 
glass. The southern boundary is adjacent 
to the pleasure ground and deer park of 
Richmond. 
Recently part of the grounds adjacent 
to Kew Palace have been sufficiently 
opened up, so that the palace is clearly seen 
from the Gardens. This old palace, unpre- 
tentious and ugly as it is, has its memories 
in fact and fancy, and its site has an older 
history still. Here stocd the ‘ dairie house’ 
which in Elizabethan times was owned by 
Robert Dudley, and here is where Leicester 
brought his first wife, the unfortunate Amy 
Robsart, after his marriage at Richmond 
Palace. Here, in the present palace, was 
the home of the good Queen Caroline, and 
here brave Jeanie Deans was brought 
into her presence by the noble Argyle to 
intercede for her unfortunate sister. Here 
the good queen died in 1737, and here 
George the Third, still wondering why he 
lost his colonies, passed his last mournful 
years in comparative solitude. At the rear 
of the palace, easily visible from the Thames 
bank and path, is the venerable linden tree, 
with its dense foliage, under which the 
children of George the Third were trained 
in their rustic out-of-door school, and a 
little farther up the Thames, on what is 
called ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Lawn,’ is the old” 
stump of the elm planted by the bloody 
Mary, still managing to put forth a few 
leafy branches, though merely a fragment 
remains of its former greatness. A much 
younger and smaller elm on the same lawn 
has a girth of nearly twenty-five feet. 
Throughout the grounds at Kew are 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Von. X. No. 238. 
magnificent examples of many native and 
exotic trees; among the many are the 
noble oriental sycamore just beyond the 
old orangery ; the weird cedars of Lebanon, 
near the pagoda; and, what are the most in- 
teresting, the black locust and the persim- 
mon standing near the Temple of the Sun, 
the last particularly a much finer specimen 
than is usually seen in its American haunts. 
This group contains, perhaps, the oldest 
trees in the garden, and a tradition asserts 
that they were among the number trans- 
planted from the garden of the famous 
Duke of Argyle. Besides these trees, which 
are not indigenous to Britain, are the groves 
of English beeches and elms in places sur- 
rounded by soil that has not been disturbed 
for over two hundred years and producing 
a spring flora unlike that of any portion of 
England for miles around. Hereand there 
are magnificent couples of lindens or 
European oaks, often planted on a slightly 
raised artificial mound, and at one point 
there is alonely row of decrepit elms care- 
fully protected in their old age and known 
as the ‘seven sisters ’—tradition telling us 
that they were planted for the seven 
daughters of King George; only five of 
them now remain and some of these are 
badly battered by time. 
Across the Thames from the garden, over 
a wide stretch of greensward toward which 
one of the delightful vistas of the garden | 
opens, is the old Syon house, an old mon- 
astery and nunnery founded by Henry the 
Fifth in 1415, but closed for the second 
time by Elizabeth, and presented by her to 
the Duke of Northumberland, to whose 
line it still belongs.* A little farther up, 
* This old monastery, like many others, has its 
quaint history, which has been elaborated in book 
form. One of its peculiarities, due, perhaps, to the 
fact that it was occupied by both monks and nuns, 
was the maintenance of silence, which necessitated the 
formation of a sign language as elaborate as it was 
peculiar. From its long series of signs we quote one 
or two samples : 
