IRatiue IKlotes : 
Zbc Selbonie Society’s ill^agasine. 
No. 59. NOVEMBER, 1894. Vol. V. 
A BIRD-LOVED SUBURB. 
O those who love the sights and sounds of rural life, no 
suburb of London is so pleasant to live in as Richmond. 
The park affords a perennial charm ; the less known 
and less visited surroundings of the park furnish 
scenes whereof the interest is well-nigh inexhaustible ; and the 
Terrace garden that we owe to the laudable enterprise of the 
town presents lovely slopes, terraced walks and flowers, and 
charming river-peeps, with varied aspects of plant-life and bird- 
life, the like of which it would be difficult to find on any other 
spot whatever, so near to London. This garden, which was for 
a long time a ducal pleasaunce, preserves relics of its former 
splendour in statues that still show traces of original excellence 
of design ; in cosy bowers for pairs, each of which seems, as it 
were, formed of the half of a canoe, cut in two, and set upright 
on the plane of bisection ; in grand old magnolias, putting out 
in autumn large flowers that are loved and haunted by honey- 
seeking bees ; and in fine foreign trees and shrubs, such as the 
prettily foliaged Salisbnria adiantifolia, which bears the name, 
not of a modern statesman, as some have supposed, but of a 
botanist who flourished when the tree was imported from Japan. 
Then, too, pleasant Petersham, with all its poetic memories, forms 
an integral part of Richmond on the south, and on the north as 
a similar part of the borough, we have all the glory, and the 
wealth, and the beauty of Kew Gardens. There we may find 
the floral treasures of the whole of the world preserved, and 
displayed in choicest form, and placed before us in complete 
scientific nomenclature, to afford us never-ending objects for 
study or for enjoyment. There we may admire the glorious 
flower of the Victoria lily from the Amazon, or study such trees 
