GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
grew, grey in its service. Mr. Thomas Wheeler filled the post of 
Prefectus Horti and Botanical Demonstrator at Chelsea, for forty- 
two years, and for the best part of half a century demonstrated in 
the open air in the summer months, to the members of the Society 
and to its students. But of him and his son I shall have more to say. 
In 1753, just after the death of Sir Hans Sloan, the expenses 
of the garden, which for some years had been £200 and £220 
per annum, began again to be heavily felt; and to the regular 
upkeep had now to be added a considerable sum for repairs. An 
appeal for help to the new President of the Royal Society was made 
without result. It seems strange that Sir Hans Sloan, so liberal 
to the garden in the past, should have made no provision whatever 
for it in his will. The Society, however, bravely struggled on 
independently, and in 1771, with the consent of the conservators 
of the Thames for the City of London, in order to recover ground 
that had once belonged to them, the apothecaries embanked the 
garden towards the river, at the cost of £400. Their efforts indeed 
throughout its history, both in their corporate capacity, and as 
individual members, are deserving of all praise. We read of one 
‘* honorary ’’ demonstrator presenting forty tons of old stones from 
the Tower of London to raise a rockery for the cultivation of plants 
requiring a particular soil; and of the gift by Joseph, afterwards 
Sir Joseph, Banks, of a large quantity of lava from Iceland; this 
was followed later by the presentation by him of three hundred 
different kinds of seeds, collected in his voyage round the world 
with Captain Cook in 1768. Besides all this, public-spirited 
outsiders were willing to help an enterprise that, for the sake of 
science, was making such a gallant fight for existence. In 1787 
we find a handsome gift of loam arriving from Sion, the Duke of 
Northumberland’s estate at Isleworth; and one wonders whether 
the ‘‘ seven loads of black mould ” that came about the same time 
from Wimbledon, ‘‘ with the approval of Earl Spencer,’’ may not 
have been sent at the suggestion of Georgiana Spencer, the beautiful 
Duchess of Devonshire, whom we shall meet with at Chiswick 
House. I have dealt with the famous grounds of Sion and Chiswick 
House in other chapters ; and independent of one another, for the 
most part, as are the different gardens described in this boo , it 
is rather interesting to find that there are connecting links between 
most of them. 
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