Keiv Garden. 433 



Dr. Lindley " recommends that the Lord Steward be relieved from 

 the burthen of this Garden, unless it should be Her Majesty's pleasure 

 to retain it." If the Botanical Garden of Kew is relinquished by the 

 Lord Steward, it should either be at once taken for public purposes, 

 gradually made worthy of the country, and converted into a powerful 

 means of promoting national science, or it should be abandoned. It 

 is little better than a waste of money to maintain it in its present 

 state, if it fulfil no intelligible purpose, except that of sheltering a 

 large quantity of rare and valuable plants. 



" The importance of public Botanical Gardens has for centuries 

 been recognised by the Government of civilized states, and at this 

 time there is no European nation without such an establishment, ex- 

 cept England. The most wealthy and most civilized kingdom in 

 Europe offers the only European example of the want of one of the 

 first proofs of wealth and civilization. France, Prussia, Austria, Ba- 

 varia, Russia, Hanover, Holland, not to mention smaller Govern- 

 ments, have all Botanical Gardens, liberally maintained with public 

 funds ; and what is more curious, Dublin and Edinburgh have simi- 

 lar establishments to which grants of public money have been liber- 

 ally furnished, but London has nothing, except a small Garden at 

 Chelsea, maintained by the funds of a private corporation. Now that 

 a great number of students are annually collected in London for the 

 purpose of study, it has become indispensable that such means of in- 

 struction as a Botanical Garden affords, should be provided. It ap- 

 pears, from returns obtained from the Society of Apothecaries, that 

 annually, on an average of the last three years, as many as 433 medi- 

 cal students have been registered as attending lectures on Botany in 

 London. They are compelled to attend these lectures, not only by the 

 Apothecaries' Society and the College of Surgeons, but by the regula- 

 tions of the army and navy ; and yet this large number of young men 

 studying the most important of professions, is practically deprived of 

 the advantages of referring to a Botanical Garden, without which it is 

 impossible that their studies can be prosecuted efficiently. It is true 

 that there is a Botanical Garden at Chelsea, belonging to the Apothe- 

 caries' Society, but it is not to be expected that the funds of such a 

 corporation, however liberally disposed it may be, should suffice for 

 the maintenance of such a Botanical Garden as the wants of students 

 render necessary. 



