CHAPTER III. 
West Park and Kew, 1841-1865. 
DURING his occupation of the Professorship of Botany in 
Glasgow University my father, feeling keenly his severance 
from the scientific society of London, was always on the look- 
out for a congenial position there, even if of less emolument 
than that which he held. The Professorship of Botany in the 
newly created University College of London (then entitled 
London University) was pressed on him by Lord Brougham, 
but the possibility of an appointment to the Royal Botanic 
Gardens of Kew had for some years eclipsed all other 
prospects. Nor were his aspirations in this direction unrea- 
sonable, for over and above his botanical qualifications he had 
inherited a taste for cultivating plants, encouraged by ten 
years’ experience in his own garden, greenhouse, and stove at 
Halesworth ; he had twenty years’ of good work in and for the 
Royal Botanic Gardens of Glasgow, and had been for thirteen 
years author of the 8 Botanical Magazine/ a serial devoted to 
the illustration and description of cultivated plants. Added 
to this was the fact that Mr. Aiton, who as ‘ Gardener to Her 
Majesty’ had controlled the Gardens of Kew since 1793, was 
approaching the age for retirement. Meanwhile the Kew 
Botanic Gardens, which for upwards of half a century had 
ranked as the richest in the world, had since the deaths, almost 
contemporaneously, of King George III and Sir Joseph 
Banks, been officially cold-shouldered, and had retrograded 
scientifically. Their early history is summarized in the official 
8 Guide-book to the Royal Gardens,’ and need not be repeated 
here. The following is a resume of the circumstances that 
led to their transference from the private property of the 
Sovereign to the nation as a scientific establishment under 
