52 
NATURE NOTES. 
tained that the physical structure of the earth testified to the 
universal agency throughout all time of one all-directing, all- 
pervading i\Iind, and was a witness to His unlimited power, 
wisdom and benevolence. It is the fashion in our day, in 
sympathy with prevailing theories, to decry design in nature ; 
a wiser and more philosophical view must in time assert itself. 
As Dean of Westminster, Buckland was popular and active. 
He carried out man}' improvements in the buildings committed 
to his charge. It is remarkable that up to his day the whole 
drainage of Westminster was by a foul and most unhealthy open 
ditch; this he converted into a closed drain, to the great gain of 
the health of the scholars. He was always active in some good 
work, and left behind him, in every position he occupied, lasting 
monuments of his activity. After a mysterious illness of some 
months, he died at Islip in 1856. It is a great satisfaction to 
have a trustworthy life of the Dean, and we are grateful to Mrs. 
Gordon for the loving service she has rendered in this memoir 
of her illustrious father. 
W1LLI.A.M C.\RRUTHERS. 
“NEW LONDON.” 
DER this heading the Daily Chronicle has been giving 
a series of interesting and admirably illustrated articles 
on the work of the London County Council. We 
have no intention of entering into the relative merits 
of “^loderates” and “Progressives”; and by the time this 
issue of N.^ture Notes is circulated, London will have made 
up her mind to which of the rival bodies she will entrust her 
administration for the next three years. But Selbornians will 
look favourably upon the good work "which the expiring Council 
has done for parks and open spaces, and may be glad to have a 
summary of the results of their stewardship. This the Daily 
Chronicle gives as follows : — 
*• Every Londoner knows Coleman .Street, but few know or think that beyond 
it ran the old London Wall, and that further still lay the moor or fen which to-day 
we call Moorfields or Finsbury. More than three hundred and fifty years ago, 
when the moor was a moor indeed, it was drained, laid out, and turned into 
London’s first public park. So it remained until the Corporation became its 
owners. They destroyed the park and raised Finsbury Circus in its stead ! So 
much for London’s breathing space under its old governing body. What about 
the public pleasure grounds of New London? 
“ The most crucial instance of the Council’s devotion to fresh air, and the good 
things in the way of sport and athletic life that come from it, is its exemplary 
guardianship of the parks. In this respect the Council have had almost every- 
thing to do. To-day London owns as her special heritage of common ground, 
apart from the royal parks, 3,656 acres as against 2,650 which were her heritage 
six years ago. Every year on an average during the six years of the Council’s 
administration, seven new playgrounds have been thrown open, the annual average 
for the last four ye.ars of the .Metropolitan Board’s administration being one and a 
