14 



KEW GARDENS. 



to cultivate in a large canal, crossed at intervals by tasty bridges, 

 tlie Victoria regia and other marine plants ! The lapsus linguoe 

 dispelled the whole charm of the scene. A new aquarium at 

 Kew will by-and-bye receive the Victoria; but even it its humble 

 tank it is a vegetable wonder, putting forth alternately a blossom 

 and a leaf, the latter not the less curious of the two, and looking, 

 as it begins to emerge, very like a hedgehog swimming on its 

 back. The little wheel used at Ch^tsworth, at Sj^on,"^'^ and in the 

 Regent's Park Botanical Gardens, to keep the suiface water in agi- 

 tation, is here found unnecessary for the health of the plant. The 

 leaf attains its curious rim, and also perfects the honey-combed 

 air chambers in the under surface, by which its buoyancy is in- 

 creased, enabling it, with management — that is, by equalizing 

 the pressure — to support as much as ten stone weight. Another 

 floating contrivance is seen in a corner of the same tank, in Pan- 

 tederia crassipes, the footstalks of whose leaves are swollen into 

 bladders. At the foot of the Victoria reposes the pretty Nym- 

 phoea pygmoea^ a dwarf water-lib/, with white flowers the size of 

 a shilling ; and on one side the Nelumhium speciosum^ which fur- 

 nished the bouquet to the ladies whose mummies adorn the British 

 Museum, still offers to us its blossoms, though of paler colouring. 



Let us pass the handsomiC symmetrical lake, thread the par- 

 terre of gaudy flowers, mount the steps conducting to the terrace, 

 and enter the Palm-stove. We can now form some idea of a 

 tropical forest ; a tiger might start out from among these tree- 

 ferns, a boa-constrictor might be chmbing the trunk of that cocoa- 

 nut palm, humming-birds might be darting amidst the leaves of 

 those Bananas. Every plant lias its own interesting histoiy, but 

 w^e can only glance at a few of the most remarkable. The tall 

 shrub with crimson holly-hock-like flowers is the Hthisciis — rosa. 

 Sinensis ; its blossoms are used in China to hlacJc shoes with ! A 

 plant inconspicuous in such a place as the great Palm-stove, but 

 of considerable botanical importance as an exaggerated instance of 



^ The plant was first introduced at Kew — from which the rest are oflsets. 

 It first Jloioered'dt Chatsworth, next at Kew, then at Kew's charming neigh- 

 bour, Syon — where this summer both the leaves, like enormous green card 

 tables, and the unrivalled splendour of the flower, were admired by so many 

 visitors, through the princely generosity of the Duke of Northumberland, 

 who may be said to have, for the season of the Great National Exhibition, 

 surrendered to the public both his London palace — the only real one of our 

 old nobility now remaining— and this equally unrivalled sicburbanum. 



