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112 were not planted with the care which might have overcome the disadvantage. It became necessary to reconstruct the Arboretum twenty years ago on this account. A singular example of the influence of fashion in gardening then came to light. The British public had been running after evergreens so hotly that nurserymen had ceased to grow deciduous species. It seems incredible that the authorities of Kew should have asked in vain for months throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, for young aspens. As for American oaks, maples, etc., they absolutely could not be found in the kingdom. Unscientific lovers of the beautiful may rejoice that it has not yet been found necessary to interfere with the old forest trees, planted, perhaps, by Lord Capel. The new-comers are arranged by genus—all the willows, for example, with the alders, around the pretty lake, pines here, cedars there, oaks, nuts, maples, tamarisks, camellias, ranunculus, etc., etc.

In the Garden proper the smaller plants are found in bewildering array. No list of the species represented at Kew has been taken since that of the younger Aiton in 1810, but one is now being made. Some departments have been catalogued already. Of orchids, there are about 1,400 species; ferns, 1,100; stove plants, 2,500; succulents, 1,000; palms and cycads, 500; greenhouse plants, 3,000; herbaceous, 4,000; trees and shrubs, 3,000; in several cases, however, the figure is but a guess as yet. The total, great as it will prove to be, bears but a small proportion to the sum of Nature's wealth. If we take the flowering plants alone, as enumerated in Bentham and Hooker's Genera Plantarum, there are two hundred natural orders, 10,000 genera, and 100,000 species; and this leaves out of account the ferns and all the lower orders of Cryptogamia. The Economic Section has few visitors, and they are not tempted to carry exploration far. Not a few of the culinary and medicinal herbs in use are found here. If by some fatal chance the onion of commerce should be exterminated in the back-gardens of England, Kew is prepared to replace it. Side by side therewith grow the patience-dock and the skunk-cabbage, the briony, the cuckoo-pint, the Japanese yam, and the all-good. In ferns the Kew collection is exceedingly rich. It has had three special benefactors in this department, to the first of whom, Mr. George C. Joad, the public is indebted for the charming rock-garden opened in 1881. Sir Joseph Hooker had long been working for one, and the bequest of Mr. Joad's collection of ferns brought the matter to a crisis. Dr. Cooper Forster was an enthusiast upon the culture of filmy ferns, and Mr. W. C. Carbonell was specially interested in the cultivation of hardy ferns, particularly in the crossing of them, and the development of sports. Both these gentlemen bequeathed their treasures for the nation's enjoyment when their own power of enjoying them ended.