98 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
skating days in each winter is instructive. Taking the 
periods of ten years during the first decade, 1830-40, there 
was an average of 10.2 skating days per winter. In 
1 833-34 there were none, in 1837-38 thirty-seven days. 
Between 1850-60 the average was only 8.5, while the last 
ten years of the century it was 16.8. It is difficult to 
see how any argument could be deduced from such 
figures in favour of the excess of cold in the good old 
days ! When the freezing of the Thames is quoted to 
prove the case, people forget that the Thames has com¬ 
pletely changed. The narrow piers of old London 
Bridge no longer get stopped with ice-floes, and the 
current is much more rapid now that the whole length is 
properly embanked. In the days when coaches plied from 
Westminster to the Temple Stairs as in 1684, or when 
people dwelt on the Thames in tents for weeks in 1740, 
all the low land was flooded and the stream wider and 
more sluggish. The believers in the hard winters gene¬ 
rally maintain the springs were warmer than now, May 
Day more like what poets pictured, even allowing the 
eleven days later for our equivalent. But in 1614 there 
was snow a foot deep in April, and those who went in 
search of flowers on May Day only got snowflakes. In 
1698, on May 8th, there was a deep fall of snow all over 
England, and many other instances might be quoted. So 
it seems, though people may grumble now, their ancestors 
were no better off. 
In the centre of the ground is the Royal Botanical 
Society of London, founded in 1839. At one time the 
Society was greatly in fashion, and the membership was 
eagerly sought after. No doubt such will be the case 
again, although for some reason the immense advance in 
gardening during the last ten years has not met with the 
