INNS OF COURT 
287 
the trees of North America, he gives the same story, 
and adds, “in August 1748” it produced, “at Mr. 
Gray’s, such numbers of blossoms, that the leaves were 
almost hid thereby.” This Mr. Gray owned the 
nurseries in Brompton, famous under the management 
of London and Wise. 
In Philip Miller’s dictionary, Catesby’s history of 
the plant is referred to, and also in 1808, in the 
Botanical Magazine , when the plant was figured. 
There it says the plant “ has been long an inhabitant 
of our gardens, being introduced by the same Botanist 
[Catesby] about the year 1728.” “It bears the smoke 
of large towns better than most trees; the largest 
specimen we have ever seen grows in the garden 
belonging to the Society of Gray’s Inn.” There is 
no hint that the tree in question could have been 
here before Catesby’s discovery, and it is not till 
Loudon’s Encyclopaedia in 1822 that the planting is 
attributed to Bacon. Such a remarkable tree could 
hardly have escaped all gardeners for more than a 
century, during a time when gardening was greatly 
in fashion, and every new plant greedily sought after. 
We know that nearly a hundred years ago this specimen 
was the finest in England, and therefore it may have 
been planted not more than a hundred years or so 
after Bacon’s death. Raleigh very likely walked with 
Bacon on the spot where it now stands, but, alas! the 
possibility that he brought Bacon a tree from Virginia, 
which was only discovered near the Mississippi a century 
later, is hardly credible. 
The entrance to the Gardens on the Holborn side 
is through massive wrought-iron gates, on which the 
date 1723 is legible. The letters “ w. 1. g.” are the 
