344 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
been in his family for some 150 years. It was well 
known as Argyll Lodge, as the late Duke bought the 
lease and made it his town residence from the time 
he first took office in Lord Aberdeen’s ministry in 1852. 
Before that it was known as Bedford Lodge, as the 
Duchess of Bedford, step-mother of Lord John Russell, 
the Prime Minister, had lived there and laid out and 
planted most of the garden. The “ two very old oaks, 
which,” wrote the Duke of Argyll, “would have done 
no discredit to any ancient chase in England,” are still 
to be seen. The Duke was also delighted with the wild 
birds which there made their homes in the garden ; in 
fact, he says in his Memoirs, it was the sight of the 
“fine lawn covered with starlings, hunting for grubs 
and insects in their very peculiar fashion,” the nut¬ 
hatches “ moving over the trees, as if they were in 
some deep English woodland,” the fly-catchers and the 
warblers, that made him decide to take the house. 
During the half-century he lived there many of the 
birds, the fly catchers, reed-wren, black cap, and willow- 
wren, and nut-hatches, deserted the garden, but even 
now starlings and wood-pigeons abound, and, what is 
even more rare in London, squirrels may be seen 
swinging from branch to branch of the old trees. Be¬ 
sides the two old pollard oaks there are good beech and 
copper-beech, elder, chestnuts, snowy medlar, sycamore, 
several varieties of thorn, and a large Scotch laburnum, 
Laburnum alpinum , which flowers later than the ordinary 
laburnum, and is therefore valuable to prolong the 
season of these golden showers. The leaves are broader 
and darker, and growth more spreading. On the vine 
trellis is a curious old vine with strongly scented flowers. 
All the plants which thrive in London are well grown 
