SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 



925 



giving effect to it ; which it did by sending out seeds and cases of living 

 plants year after year, and a succession of young gardeners to plant and 

 sow. According to Captain Barnard's Eeport to the Admiralty, ' the 

 island in 1865 possessed thickets of upward of forty kinds of trees, 

 besides numerous shrubs and fruit trees, of which, however, only the 

 Guava ripens. These afford timber for fencing cattle -yards.' In 1843 

 there was but one tree on the island and no shrubs, and there were not 

 enough vegetables produced to supply the Commandant's table. The 

 Report goes on to say : 1 Through the spread of vegetation the water 

 supply is excellent, and the garrison and the ships visiting the island are 

 supplied with abundance of vegetables of various kinds.' 



" The Arboretum, formerly the Boyal Pleasure Grounds of.Kew. — In 

 1845 Mr. Aiton was relieved of the charge of that portion of the Pleasure 

 Grounds (about 178 acres) then in occupation of the King of Hanover 

 as a game preserve, which had not been as yet added to the Botanic 

 Gardens, together with the Deer Park (350 acres), and my father was 

 asked to include these in his directorate. This he agreed to do, though 

 no hint of an increase of salary accompanied the request, and though 

 the duties involved were neither botanical nor horticultural, but rather 

 agricultural. He had no doubt two good reasons for this compliance, 

 one in having an eye to the remainder of the Pleasure Grounds as the 

 site for an Arboretum worthy of the nation ; the other, that to have 

 allowed these to be placed under any other authority might have led to 

 complications. 



" Thus the Director's rule was extended in four years from a Botanic 

 Garden of eighteen acres and a few hundred yards in length to an area of 

 nearly 650 acres, extending from Kew Green to the Thames at Rich- 

 mond, two miles distant. Some idea may be formed of the labour which 

 this acceptance of extra duty entailed, from the following extract of a 

 letter dated March 1846, and addressed to Mr. Turner. He says : ' For 

 myself, the gardens have never made such demands on my time as at the 

 present season, when the most extensive operations are being carried on 

 in the Pleasure Grounds, as well as in the Botanic Gardens. In each 

 place our usual complement of men is much more than doubled. In the 

 former, owing to severe illness of the foreman, I have to superintend 

 everything, and there is literally not a man in whom I can put confidence 

 about the place. I have lately detected very gross abuses, which there 

 is every reason to believe have been practised for a long time under the 

 regime of my predecessor.' 



" Museums. — Referring to the storehouse for fruit in the old Kitchen 

 Garden of Kew, alluded to at p. lvii * as left standing in 1846, when that 

 piece of ground [the Royal Kitchen Gardens, which had remained under 

 Mr. Aiton's management] was added to the Botanic Gardens, it appeared 

 to my father that it might be converted into a Museum of Economic 

 Products of the Vegetable Kingdom, raw and manufactured, and for the 

 exhibition of large fruits and other objects of varied interest, nowhere 

 displayed to view. Of such objects he had a large collection, formed 

 chiefly for the use of his class in Glasgow, and others were scattered 

 * Annals of Botany, vol. xvi. 



