INTRODUCTION OF ORANGE TREES INTO ENGLAND, .340 
Collinsoii s MSS notes in his copy of Miller’s Gardener sDictionarxj, 
which were published by A. B. Lambert, Esq. in the Linneaii 
Society Transactions, vol. x. there is some difference, and I think, 
some errors corrected in the foregoing account of liyson’s. Mr, 
Collinson’s note is as follows :— 
“From my nephevy, Thomas Collinson’s Journal of his Travels, 
1754. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, anno-the first orange 
and lemon trees were introduced into England by two curious 
gentlemen, one of them Sir NicholasJCarew, at Beddington, near 
Croydon, Surrey, these orange trees were planted in the natural 
ground. Against winter an artificial covering was raised for their 
protection. I have seen them some years ago in great perfection. 
But this apparatus going to decay, without due consideration a 
green-house of brick-work was built all round them, and left on the 
top uncovered in the summer. I visited them a year or two after 
in their new habitation, and to my great concern, found some dying, 
and all declining; for although there were windows on the south 
side, they did not thrive in their confinement; hut being kept damp 
with the rains, and wanting a free, airy, full sun all the growing 
months of summer, they languished, and at last died. 
“ A better fate has hitherto attended the other fine parcel of 
orange trees, &c. brought over at the same time by Sir Robert 
Mansell, at Margam, (late Lord Mansell’s, now Mr. Talbots’,) called 
Kingsey-castle, in the road from Cowhridge to Swansea, in South 
Wales. My nephew counted eighty trees of citron, limes, burga^ 
mots, Seville and china orange trees, planted in great cases all ranged 
in a row before the green-house; this is the finest sight of its kind 
in England. He had the curiosity to measure some of them : a 
china orange tree measured in the extent of its branches fourteen 
feet; a Seville orange tree was fourteen feet high, the case included, 
and the stem twenty-one inches round: a china orange tree twenty- 
two inches and a half in girth. 
“July 11th, 1777. I visited the orangery at Margam in the year 
1766, in comjiany with Mr. Lewis Thomas, of Eglwys Nynngt, in 
that neighbourhood, a very sensible and attentive man, wdio told me 
that the orange trees, &c. w^ere intended as a present from the king 
of Spain to the king of Denmark ; and that the vessel in which they 
were shipped being taken in the channel, the trees were made a 
present of to Sir R, Mansell,”* 
* It is not improbable that the vessel mentioned might have been taken by Sir 
Walter Raleigh, who was so much employed against the Spaniards in Queen Eliza¬ 
beth’s reign; and the orange trees divided between the Carew and Mansell’s families, 
VGL, I. NO, 12. 3 X 
