4 



KEW GARDENS. 



Majesty, and the judicious arrangements of tlie director, tlie 

 pleasure-grounds are thrown open daily — Sundays not excluded — 

 durino; the summer months. 



Everything relating to ^62^ indicates what a vast .quantity of 

 vegetable prey we are constantly taking, by the industrious hunt- 

 ing of our employes all over the world. In George III.'s time, 

 the Old Arboretum — five acres — was considered sufficient to con- 

 tain all the hardy trees ; now, tw^o hundred acres are not thought 

 too much. Our venerable Pinnock, of course on the authority of 

 Linnaeus, states that ' it is supposed there are upwards of twenty 

 thousand sjjecies of plants, which compose, what naturalists have 

 termed, the Vegetable Kingdom ; nor will this number appear so 

 very surprising w^hen we consider that the w^hole surface of the 

 earth is covered with them.' In 1851, the private herbarium of 

 the director of Kew Gardens contains 150,000 species, w^hich 

 number, however astounding, falls far short of those yet to be dis- 

 covered and collected. 



The plants here have attached to them, wdth but few exceptions, 

 their scientific name, and, when it can be given, a plain EngHsh 

 one, with the native habitat. But we are not here, as in St. James's 

 Park, mystified and confounded with the information that willows 

 are S alicineous trees^ and walnuts Juglandeous trees ; that Berheris 

 vulgaris^ the common barberry, a native of Britain, is a Berheride- 

 ous shrub — and that Corylus ai^horescens^ the arborescent hazel, a 

 native of Siberia introduced in 1829, is a cupuliferous shrub. 

 The same school of science would perhaps add the information 

 that Mr. Flamborough. who is staring at the black sw^ans, and 

 who cannot make head or tail of cupuliferous^ is a bimanous 

 mammal from the coast of Yorkshire, and that his httle friend 

 Pincher, who has been refused admis^^ion by the gentleman in 

 bottle-green, is a canine quadruped from the Hebridean Archi- 

 pelago.'^ 



* The date of the introduction of plants is valuable — but the majority of 

 such dates can only vouch that the plant was settled here before a given 

 year. Aiton, in the preface to his Ilortus Kewensis, says : — * Some plants 

 are by tradition known to havi'. been introduced by Robert James, Lord Pe- 

 tre, but the times when are utterly forgot. To remedy as much as possible 

 this inconvenience they are always stated as having been introduced before 

 1742, the year of his lordship's death. Mr. Miller, in his Dictionary, often 

 mentions plants as having been communicated to him by Dr. Houston ; but 



