54 ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
of this famous controversy need not be given here. For one thing, 
Mr. Ayrton has long been dead, whilst his opponent still lives, vigor- 
ous and alert, the Nestor of botanists. And a Blue-book on the 
question, as well as the newspapers of the time, is open to the curious 
in such matters. 
A memorial which was addressed to the Prime Minister and 
signed by a number of leading scientific men — among whom were 
^ . Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell — gave a detailed 
t account of the whole controversy. Its publication 
brought the matter to a head, and immediately 
roused a storm of indignation against the First Commissioner. 
Almost the entire Press, even that portion of it which normally 
supported the Government, took the part of the director of Kew. 
And although Mr. Gladstone and other colleagues of Mr. Ayrton 
officially made excuses and explanations for him, we know from 
memoirs since published that in private most of them regarded 
his proceedings with angry contempt. The dispute, so far as the 
public were concerned, ended in the dog-days of 1872 by a debate 
in Parliament, initiated in the House of Lords by the Earl of Derby 
and in the Commons by Sir John Lubbock. Of the permanent results 
of the whole episode it is now difficult to judge. It probably aroused 
a more widespread interest in the fortunes of Kew, and made its 
work more generally known. It showed how much the establishment 
owed to the labours and unselfishness of the two Hookers, father 
and son ; and it put the authority of the director on a firmer footing. 
The greatest disaster that has ever been recorded in connection 
with the plant-houses at Kew occurred on August 3rd, 1879. In 
the morning of that day a storm of hail wrecked 
the glass roofs of most of the houses. The hailstones 
are recorded to have averaged five inches in circum- 
ference. Nearly 40,000 panes were smashed, and the weight of the 
broken glass amounted to eighteen tons. A grant of £ 7,000 for repairs 
was sanctioned by Parliament, and an army of glaziers was set to 
work. The tropical plants suffered from cold and exposure, but 
the houses were made whole again before winter. 
The elaborate nature of the design carried out by Nesfield in 
his treatment of the parterre between the Palm House and the Pond 
has already been adverted to. His intricate scheme of gravel walks 
and box-edged flower-beds had always been costly to keep up, and 
The Great 
Hailstorm. 
