PEESIDENTIAL ADDEESS. 27 



Director. The photos I am able to shew you have been 

 specially taken for the purpose of this address and will, 

 together with the Kew plan, enable you to gain a general 

 notion of the Garden and its contents. 



In 1840 when the garden was first made a National 

 Institution it covered only 15 acres, now with the Arbore- 

 tum it extends over 248 acres, of which 70 acres form the 

 garden proper. The garden is entered from Kew Green 

 by a remarkably fine gateway, close to which are a small 

 student's garden and the vast Herbarium, where undoubt- 

 edly there lies a more complete collection of dried plants 

 than exists anywhere else in the world. Inside the 

 grounds one meets first with a house devoted to tropical 

 tree-ferns and aroids, and close at hand Museum III., the 

 old orangery, filled chiefly with specimens of timber. A 

 great range of houses divided into three sections occupies 

 the centre of this section of the Gardens, and is devoted 

 to culture of tropical and temperate ferns, succulents, 

 heaths, begonias, victorias, temperate and tropical orchids 

 and economic plants ; there is also a store house, conser- 

 vatory and alpine house. Near the rock garden and 

 herbaceous ground is a tank for aquatics, as also Museum 

 II. with specimens of botanical interest selected from 

 the monocotyledonous and cryptogamic orders, whilst 

 close to the range of bedding houses and pits, a small 

 laboratory has been erected, conveniently situated for 

 study and research. One cannot help wishing that the 

 Board of Works would see its way to erecting fully 

 equipped laboratories for anatomical and physiological 

 research on a much larger scale. The magnificent 

 collections at one's hand and the splendid library and 

 herbarium in the immediate neighbourhood, encourage 

 one to hope that at no very distinct date these advan- 

 tages may be still farther added to, and the gardens 



