president’s address. 
671 
In her will, dated February 12th, 1828, Mrs. Crowe appointed 
Sir J. E. Smith one of her executors, but by a codicil, dated 
May 2nd, 1829, she nominated her daughters, Mary Brown and 
Margaret Trafford Southwell, in the place of Sir J. E. Smith, 
deceased. 44 Her daughter Anne had married Mr. Sparrow and 
left Norfolk. Mrs. Crowe died September 19th, 1829, aged 
77 years. Both her sons had died young. 
Sir James Smith reports in 1819 that “ his living collection 
of Salices is still carefully preserved ” 15 ; but, in 1841, Grigor 
says that only two specimens of Crowe’s willows remained at 
Lakenham. “ They grow beside the river at the bottom of the 
garden, and are still in vigorous health. One of them ( Salix 
alba) is thirteen feet in circumference near the ground- and the 
other (S. Russelliana) is eight feet and five inches in 
circumference, and 47 feet high.” 5 Until lately (1914) there 
were two weeping willows which had been introduced by Sir 
James Smith. The one by the river was grown from a cutting 
off the tree beneath which the people were guillotined in the 
time of Lafayette ; the other, near the house, was a descendant 
of the tree which grew over Napoleon’s grave. 11 Sir James 
Smith had a Salix babylonica in his garden at 29, Surrey 
street, but I do not know the history of it. 
When the railway line at Lakenham was made, Tuck’s-wood 
House was being used as a public-house, and in the garden 
behind the house was a menagerie with animals in cages. The 
lower boughs were removed from the trees in the avenue, and 
there are still nails protruding from the stems of the trees on 
which cages containing birds and monkeys were hung ; the 
lawn sloping to the river was a tea garden. A few years later, 
the house was pulled down. By-and-by a red brick house was 
erected nearly on the same site, and is known as Old Lakenham 
Hall. 41 
William Withering wrote his “ Botanical Arrangement of 
British Plants ” when he lived at Birmingham and Edgbaston ; 
it is therefore not a Norfolk book ; but it is impossible to over- 
look the large contribution made to the second edition (1787-93) 
by Norfolk and Suffolk botanists, especially James Crowe, 
