158 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[December 12. 
If we were desirous of impressing upon a stranger the 
extent and prevalence of the taste for gardening now 
existing in England, we could not effect our object better 
than by placing in his hands a small volume just issued 
from the press, entitled The Beauties of Middlesex: being 
a Particular Description of the Principal Seats of the 
Nobility and Gentry. Its author, Mr. W. Keane, en- 
! dowed with a good taste for ornamental gardening, and 
a correct knowledge of horticulture generally, has visited 
those residences, and records their peculiarities in the 
pages before us. Now tliese residences amount in num¬ 
ber to somewhat more than two hundred; and if we 
accept this as a fair average of the counties of England 
and Wales, then we shall have a total of more than ten 
thousand of these “ stately homes of England” scattered 
over the face of the realm. This we think a fair calcula¬ 
tion, for although Middlesex is the metropolitan county, 
yet, with the exception of two others (Rutlandshire and 
Anglesey), it is the smallest in all Britain. It is grati¬ 
fying to know the evidence these ten thousand give of 
the love of home pleasures, now so characteristic, and 
yearly more and more characteristic, of our countrymen. 
But it is still more gratifying to know that each of those 
ten thousand are centres of improvement, tending to 
elevate the gardening and to increase the home attrac¬ 
tions of even the poorest neighbouring cottages for miles 
round each. It soon becomes known when and how 
“the gardener up at the great house” puts in his kitchen- 
garden crops and prunes his trees; and “ the gardener 
up at the great house ” will give a cutting of a flower 
now and then to those who love to have them in their 
borders and sitting-room windows. An infusion of good 
knowledge and of good plants, which we can aver from 
experience, brushes up a neighbourhood. 
At present we shall do no more than extract the fol¬ 
lowing, not only as applicable to our memoir to-day of 
Philip Miller, but as a fair specimen of the amusing 
nature of the work; but we may return to the volume, 
for it contains much suggestive matter:— 
“CHELSEA BOTANIC GARDEN 
Is venerated for its antiquity, respected for its celebrated 
patrons and curators, and upheld for its utility. 
“ ‘ Go with old Thames, view Chelsea’s glorious pile, 
And ask the shatter’d hero whence his smile.’— Rogers. 
“ Whoever has passed up the river beyond that noble 
building must have observed the two old specimens of 
vegetable life, the cedars of Lebanon, which have weathered 
the storms since the year 1083; their ramifications are 
most distinct, and their umbrella-shaped heads are pic¬ 
turesquely developed. This garden contains between three 
and four acres, its origin is involved in obscurity. The first 
notice of it in the books of the Apothecary’s Society is in 
1004, when it was proposed to wall it round ; and two years 
afterwards, the Company agreed to purchase the plants 
growing in Mrs. Gapes’ garden at Westminster; which 
garden, it is thought, may have been the one mentioned in 
Evelyn’s Diary for 1058, as ‘ the medical garden at West¬ 
minster, well stored with plants under Morgan, a skilful 
botanist.’ Piggott is the name of the first curator noticed 
in 1070, to him succeeded Watts, and then Doody, who 
continued to superintend it till 1717, when Petever was 
appointed; the celebrated Miller was appointed in 1722, at 
the time Sir Hans Sloane, when applied to for a renewal of 
the lease of the garden, granted it to the Society in per¬ 
petuity at a rental of £8 per annum, and on condition that I 
specimens of fifty new plants should annually be furnished j 
to the Royal Society, till the number amounted to two thou¬ 
sand. Miller resigned his situation two years before his 
death in 1771, and was succeeded by Forsyth, who went to 
be royal gardener at Kensington in 1784, and was succeeded 
by Fairbairn, who died here in 1814. He was succeeded by 
William Anderson, who died in 1846. Robert Fortune was 
then appointed to the situation, which he held for a short 
time, and resigned for a more lucrative appointment in 
China. The situation is now filled by Mr. Thomas Moore, 
one of the editors of the Gardener’s Magazine, who is con¬ 
tributing most materially to restore this fine old garden to 
its original high character for utility and good keeping. 
The following horticultural buildings are disposed in dif¬ 
ferent parts of the garden :—The span-roofed hothouse is 
60 feet long by 20 wide ; a fern-house 30 feet by 12; a 
greenhouse 30 feet long, and a house for succulent plants 
30 feet long by 12 wide. The span-roofed greenhouse is 
40 feet long by 20 wide. On the north side of the garden 
is a spacious brick building 120 feet long and two stories in 
height, erected in 1732. On the ground floor is the lecture- 
room, with suits of apartments overhead. Attached to it on 
one side is a greenhouse, and on the other side a stove to 
correspond, each 50 feet long. The following plants were 
noticed either for their size, rarity, age, high state of culti¬ 
vation, or for their useful medicinal properties :— 
Antiaria Urticaria (the Upas-tree) 
Gesnera mollis 
-oblongata 
Indigofera tinctoria (East Indian 
Dyer’s Indigo) 
The Chusan Daisy 
Naphiea rubida 
Phytolacca icosandra 
Allosorus sagitatus 
Gasteria nigricans 
Adianthnm curvatum 
-trapeziforme 
-setulosum 
Littcea geminiflora 
Aloe purpurascens 
Echeveria, of sorts 
Haworthia translucens 
- rctusa and other very 
pretty spotted varieties 
Thuja pendula, six feet in height 
Araucaria excelsa 
Aloe Mexicana 
Zamia elegans, three feet in cir¬ 
cumference 
- furfuracea (yields the best 
sort of Arrowroot) 
Diospyrus Lotus 
Planera Richardi 
Ostrya vulgaris 
Pandanus odoratissimus 
Cycas revoluta 
Asclepias curassavica 
Ficus nymphteifolia 
Euphorbia canariensis (the drug 
Euphorbia) 
Styrax officinale 
Fraxinus hcterophylla 
Kolreuteria paniculata 
“In the extreme eastern corner stands one of the straight- 
est, and one of the most beautiful Oriental plane-trees that 
can be seen in England ; it is 17 feet in girth 2 feet from 
the ground, with a bole 30 feet high. There are also beau¬ 
tiful specimens of the cork-tree, a large evergreen oak, and 
an unusually fine Celtis occidentals (the nettle-tree). 
There are many other exotic trees flourishing here in the 
open air : the Salisburia adiantifolia is as high and as large 
as a swan’s-egg pear-tree, which it resembles ; an old Pome¬ 
granate, Magnolia, and the Styrax officinale, and above all, 
a noble Pistacia terebinthus (the turpentine-tree and oak- 
tree of Scripture). 
“ Lysons says, that 1 Sir Joseph Banks made an accurate 
admeasurement of the two cedars of Lebanon in the month 
of August 1793, and found the girth of the larger to be 12 
feet 11J inches, that of the smaller 12 feet and half an 
inch.’ Upon being measured again in the month of May 
1809, it was found that they had increased 12 inches in girth 
since the month of August 1793. The larger one now 
(1850) measures 15 feet 9 inches, and the smaller one 13 
feet 4 inches, 2 feet from the ground. In Evelyn’s Me¬ 
moirs, vol. i., page 606, we find the following notice of this 
garden :— 1 August 7, 1685, I went to see Mr. Watts, keeper 
of the Apothecaries’ Garden of Simples, at Chelsea, where 
there is a collection of innumerable rarities of that sort 
particularly, besides many rare annuals, the true bearing 
Jesuit’s bark, which has done such wonders in quartan 
agues. What was very ingenious was the subterranean heat 
conveyed by a stove under the conservatory, all vaulted with 
bricks, so as he has the doors and windows open in the 
hardest frosts, secluding all the snow.’ 
“It is rather a singular coincidence, that after the lapse of 
more than 160 years, a system should have been introduced 
to the same place under the name of Polmaise, ‘ which was 
to heat a hothouse on a simple principle, without flues or 
hot water pipes, or anything else in the way of pipes, but 
merely by a circulation of hot ah’ abundantly supplied, and 
heated to any temperature by means of a stove.’ Although 
the system was introduced with a flourish of trumpets, and 
