JULY 21, 1899.] 
in the old bit of wild woods in the vicinity, 
is a quaint old thatched cottage of the 
sixteenth century, which Elizabeth used to 
visit with her courtiers and which. is still 
carefully preserved as ‘ the queen’s cottage.’ 
It is not surprising to those who are fa- 
miliar with the inner history of these times 
that the lane leading to this cottage and 
formerly separating Kew Gardens from the 
Richmond deer park bore the name of ‘ love 
lane.’ 
Among the notable features of Kew Gar- 
dens that can be well recommended are the 
long vistas in the arboretum crossing each 
other at angles and serving to open up dis- 
tant features of the garden grounds and thus 
preventing the massing of the vast crowds 
of visitors, who would otherwise endanger 
the glass houses and the tender ornamental 
plants of the more easily accessible por- 
tions. In the construction of these vistas 
the director has happily adopted the prac- 
tice of trimming up the lower branches of 
the lines of trees, thus giving a more per- 
fect appearance of distance and proper per- 
spective to the vista. In the purely deco- 
rative portions of the grounds, which, by 
the way, are somewhat excessive for the 
scientific harmony of the gardens, there 
are masses of one sort of flowers in 
large beds, usually of a conspicuous color, 
which serve an impressive decorative pur- 
pose. The usual monotony of the level 
ground is varied here and there by shal- 
low sunken areas with light terraces, in- 
eluding ornamental beds. The various 
buildings, conservatories and museums are 
widely separated from each other, as a fur- 
ther means of scattering the crowds of 
people who visit them. The two largest 
conservatories, the palm house and the 
‘temperate house, are over a quarter of a 
“Etyng. Pvt thy right thombe with two fore- 
fyngers joynd to thy mouthe.”’ 
‘“Pysshe. Wagge thy hande displaied sidelynges 
in manere of a fissh tail.”’ 
SCIENCE. 
69 
mile apart, and the three museum build- 
ings are at the apices of a triangle whose 
sides measure 800, 1,100 and 1,500 feet re- 
spectively. 
The famous flower paintings of the ‘ North 
Gallery,’ representing the work of the busy 
but happy life of Marianne North, form 
a valuable and beautiful adjunct to the col- 
lection, as they represent the plants of 
nearly every flora of the earth exquisitely 
painted iu their native and natural setting, 
and withal scientifically accurate in their 
delineation. 
The waste steam from the engine house 
has recently been utilized to warm a small 
pond in which sub-tropical aquatics appear 
to’ be thriving at a latitude where they 
would otherwise fail to grow in the open, 
or, at least, fail to produce their blossoms. 
It surprises one familiar with English cli- 
mate to see certain species of palms grow- 
ing outof doors, and the bamboo plantation 
is one of the instructive features of the gar- 
den collection. 
Among these praiseworthy features there 
are others that might be improved upon, 
and these should be noted. Besides the 
excess of area where a strictly decorative 
treatment obtains, there is a stiffness about 
certain portions, notably the herbaceous 
ground with its formal rectangular beds 
and the ugly brick wall that separates it 
from the rest of the garden. Strikingly in 
contrast with this, and more striking be- 
cause of its immediate vicinity, is the rock 
garden which, though artificial, is really 
one of the most delightful bits of irregu- 
larity in the entire tract. It must in jus- 
tice be said that some portions of the 
formality at Kew are inheritances from a 
royal past. Some of the old conditions 
seem strange to one of democratic birth; 
for instance, since a previous visit to Kew, 
in 1894, the wire fence that used to sepa- 
rate the more recent arboretum from the 
garden proper has been removed; on one 
’ 
