HISTORICAL GARDENS 
3 21 
works on British ferns, continued alone as Curator. He 
held the office from 1848 to 1887. During his later years 
the Garden gradually declined for want of funds, and 
after his death no new appointment was made by the 
Apothecaries, and a labourer looked after the grounds. 
With the advent of the new authority and great expan¬ 
sion of work, the office was once more bestowed on a 
competent man, William Hales, the present Curator, who 
ably maintains the old traditions of the garden. 
One of the institutions of early days which has had 
to be discontinued was the “ herborising.” Expeditions 
in search of herbs were undertaken by the students, in 
company of their teacher, in the neighbourhood. After 
1834, owing to the spread of London, these excursions 
had to be abandoned. 
The famous cedars were planted in Watt’s time, and 
from contemporary references to them, there seems no 
doubt that they were the first to be grown in England. 
John Evelyn in his “ Sylva ” in 1663, writing of the 
cedar, says, “ Why should it not thrive in Old England?” 
and Ray is astonished in 1684 to see the young trees 
flourishing at Chelsea without protection. They are 
shown in a plan of the Garden in 1753 (the year of Sir 
Hans Sloane’s death) at the four corners of a pond, 
which no longer remains in the same position. Eighteen 
years later the two furthest from the river were cut 
down (1771), “ being in a decayed state ” (and no wonder) 
from the rough usage they had been subjected to. The 
timber, 133J feet, was sold at 2s. 8d. a foot, and, together 
with the branches, the trees fetched ^23, 9s. 8d. The 
two specimens nearest the river were for nearly a hundred 
years a conspicuous object, although much injured by 
snow in 1 809. By 1871, only one remained, and, in a 
