WEMBLY PARK. 
49 
sunbeams cast their light, chequered with many a shadow, on 
the ground— too many already of these grand old trees, which 
may be fitly termed the glory of the London clay region, has 
the ever-advancing tide of bricks and mortar swept away for 
ever. The road-side hedges — home of the wild rose, honey- 
suckle, bramble and nightshade; — must vanish, and the banks 
beneath them be stripped of their mantle of moss and ivy, 
brightening the winter scene, and their summer growth of herb- 
robert, campion, stitchwort and dead-nettle. Such are the 
fields and lanes about Kingsbury, Neasden, Wembly and Sud- 
bury, and there are now but very few more such delightfully 
rural spots left at so short a distance from the City. Wembly 
Park, happily, does not embrace the whole of this area, but 
when once the park forms a nucleus of buildings, neighbouring 
landlords, tempted by high bids for their properties, will not be 
slow to dispose of their estates — let one set the pace and the 
others will follow. 
One result of this rapidly-approaching and much-to-be- 
regretted change will be the total disappearance of several 
Middlesex plants from present-existing localities. Trimen and 
Dyer’s Flora of Middlesex (1869) records 133 of the less common 
species for the neighbourhood of Kingsbury, Sudbury, and 
Wembly (parts of districts No. 4 and No. 5 of that volume); 
while Melvill’s Flora of Harrow (1876) enumerates for the same 
localities 111 species. This part of Middlesex has undergone 
but little alteration since either of these books w r ere issued ; so 
these numbers will doubtless hold good for the present time. 
A much more recent record (“ Beauties of the Brent,” Proceedings 
of the Ealing Nat. Hist. Soc., 1887-88, p. 3) gives a long list of 
many of our more beautiful water- and meadow-loving plants 
found in a ramble along the valley of the Brent ; not by every 
stream, in places even thirty miles from London, are found the 
j^ellow and the white water-lily, bulrush, sweet-sedge, arrow- 
head, water-flag, and the beautiful flowering-rush. 
Dismissing the question of the proposed Exhibition Ground, 
the success of which, financially, at such a distance from the 
centre of the metropolis, must suggest itself as doubtful to those 
far better qualified to judge in such matters than the present 
writer, a few words must be said as to the proposal to erect a 
new r Eiffel Tower in Wembly Park. Much has been most 
justly written in this magazine, and elsewhere, against sky- 
signs : not a single member of the Selborne Society, I feel 
assured, will give his or her support towards the establishment 
of this most hideous sky-sign of all. And let it not be thought 
that, in speaking thus, the writer is ignoring the material 
advantages such a scheme would confer in supplying labour 
to hundreds of unemployed workmen. That is the only ground 
upon which its promotion could be rightly defended ; but there 
are other channels of employment open, as useful and profitable 
to the public at large as the Eiffel Tower scheme would be use- 
