This is one happy instance of an admirable situation, where Nature
is modestly and judiciously improved, not hurt, by art. An opposite
instance of what art, skill, and taste may produce, without any
particular advantages of ground or situation, is most agreeably
displayed in the royal gardens at Kew. There you find an extent of
flat ground, so easily, agreeably, and unaffectedly broken, that
you would think it impossible to alter it but to the worse. To
pass without any notice the agreeable and the elegant pieces of
architecture, which without crowding adorn those delightful gardens;
perhaps there is not a physick garden in Europe where any botanist can
be more agreeably entertained, as to the variety of curious plants.
But there is something new as far as I know, and particularly
ingenious here in the disposition and management of them. Those that
naturally delight in the rocks, and the dry hungry soil, are here
planted upon ridges of artificial rock-work; where they shew all
the luxuriance of vegetation that they could amongst the Alps, the
Pyrenees or the Andes. While a very different tribe, the Aquatics,
display themselves in a large cistern, where they are constantly
supplied with their best and most natural nourishment the rain water,
conveyed to them from the eves of the richest greenhouse I have ever
seen.




William Andrews Clark Memorial Library: University of California

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