214
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
16th, and again from the 20th to the 23rd, when he rode to
Little Gaddesden in Hertfordshire to stay with Mr. William
Ellis, the agriculturist, returning on April 16th, and coming
back to town with Warner on the 21st. They then spent some
days lionising, visiting Westminster Abbey, the Monument,
St. Paul's, where Kalm describes a Festival of the Sons of the
Clergy, Ranelagh, Vauxhall, Greenwich, Peter Collinson's
garden at Peckham, and, above all, the Chelsea Garden, "one
''of the most renowned in Europe, where we found the learned
"Mr. Miller as Praefectus Horti," and the wonderful library and
collections of Sir Hans Sloane, then in his eighty-eighth year
and confined to his bed.10 Kalm seems to have become intimate
with Philip Miller, of whom he gives a full account : he enumer-
ates many of Sloane's chief curiosities and made the acquaint-
ance of many of the leading Fellows of the Royal Society. Al-
ways keeping his eyes open, he describes the Portland stone
used by Wren and the Hertfordshire Pudding stone, the raising
of the Arbutus from seed by James Gordon, the herbaria of
Ray and Dale, mutilated by Sherard, at Chelsea, May-Day fes-
tivities, the Chelsea nursery gardens, the prorogation of Parlia-
ment by George II. in person, the London penny-post, a Quakers'
meeting, and many other things. Returning to Woodford with
Warner for two days more on May 7th, on the following day he
visited with him "das prachtige Schloss des Mylords Tilney"
at Wanstead.
He tells us that Warner kept four Newfoundland gulls in
his garden, which came to be fed when called, and also that he
was informed by him that the furze "flowers all the year through,
"even in the severest months of mid-winter." He also enum-
erates the chief trees of Epping Forest, as well as those commonly
cultivated in gardens, and one cannot but be impressed with
the conviction that Warner's Swedish guest made good use of
his powers of observation during his five months' stay in England.
It is perhaps noteworthy in connection with Kalm's visit
to Warner that, among other relics of its former proprietor,
the garden at "Harts," which the writer has been able to visit
through the kindness of Mr. James Spicer, who now resides there,
contains fine specimens of the beautiful North American shrub,.
Kalmia, that immortalises the Swedish traveller. Kalm's
10 Sloane died January 1753, aged nearly 93.