liv Sir William Jackson Hooker. 
Then I said, “ There are eighteen acres, let us see what can be 
done with them. ,, “Now then,” he added, “ you had better see 
Lord Duncannon” (with whom, as with Lord Melbourne, he 
has had frequent communications). I told him I did not 
know him, and would be glad of a line from him. “ Say 
I begged you might have an interview.” I called, sent up my 
card with the above message, but the answer was, “ His Lord- 
ship is very busy, and will be so busy on Monday and Tuesday 
that he cannot see you till Wednesday.” This is always the 
kind of reception I have met with in attempting to see Lord 
Duncannon \ I am sure that with him, in reality the most 
influential man connected with Kew, there are obstacles that 
Lord Monteagle was justified in considering “ insuperable.’* 
I believe more than ever that Lord Duncannon’s great desire 
is to abolish the Gardens and save the expense to the Civil 
List. If he is determined on this I then think that Lord John 
will appeal to Parliament, for the Duke of Bedford was very 
explicit in assuring me that if his brother failed in one way 
he was prepared to try another.’ 
It was not till the following March that my father was 
officially informed that the Treasury had sanctioned his 
being appointed Director of the Botanic Gardens at Kew, 
with a salary of £$oo and £zoo allowance for the rent of 
a house. On the 26th of that month Mr. Aiton, under in- 
structions from the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, 
transferred the Botanic Gardens and Arboretum to the new 
Director, reserving all printed books and drawings as being his 
private property, and all journals 2 , accounts, correspondence, 
1 More than a month elapsed before he could obtain an interview with Lord 
Duncannon, and then only through his having been introduced at a breakfast party 
to one of the Commissioners, Mr. Milne, who arranged the meeting for him. He 
found his lordship, he writes, very communicative ; he told him of the difficulties 
and obstacles, but that they were not insurmountable, that he would with the 
greatest pleasure further all Lord John’s views to the utmost of his power, and 
that all he wished was, that there should be no more ground taken into the 
Gardens, and that the Civil List should not be further burthened. 
2 The journals, & c., were for the most part, I believe, transferred to the 
Commissioners on the death of Mr. Aiton, who had retained his official residence, 
and they are now at Kew. The collection of drawings, made under Mr. Aiton’s 
supervision, was subsequently presented to the Royal Gardens by Mr. Atwell 
Smith, a relative of Mr. Aiton. There had been in the office a considerable 
herbarium of garden plants and of others made by collectors sent from the 
