Near the Receiving House, boats can be hired for diversion on the lake, and on the opposite, or southern side, is a very fine bathing place, which is most extensively patronized, both in early morning and late evening, in the summer--nay, all the year round come some bathers, be the weather what it will, regardless of rain or frost. A boat rows up and down to rescue any swimmer who should be suddenly seized with cramp. On the same side, [Illustration: FROM “ROQUE’S SURVEY,” 1741-1745. Face page 120. ] but nearer the eastern end, is the favourite place for sailing miniature vessels, some of them being beautiful models, exquisitely fitted and very costly. At the eastern end of the Serpentine, its water overflows in a miniature cascade into a very pretty little dell, in which are rabbits disporting themselves, together with pheasants, and in 1890 there was a squirrel. As the public are not allowed to invade this portion, but only to look at it, the small zoological domain increases and multiplies, and the animals become exceedingly tame. In this dell is a monolith, which came from Moorswater, in the parish of Liskeard, Cornwall, where it was quarried on Jan. 3, 1862. One of the excavators employed in the work was accidentally killed, and his death was the cause of the publication of two books, _William Sandy, who died by an accident at Moorswater_, _etc._, and _The grace of God manifested in the life and death of William Sandy_, _etc._ This monolith, although obviously only placed in the Dell for ornamental purposes, was, by a correspondent in _Notes and Queries_,[40] declared to be a phallic symbol. Between Stanhope Gate and Grosvenor Gate, close by the flower-walk, may be noticed a circular basin having in its centre a fountain. This, which is shown in Roque’s Map, was a reservoir of the Chelsea Water Works Company, and it stood, as the same map well shows, in a double avenue of walnut-trees. These, ultimately, became very decayed, and about 1811 they were cut down, and their timber made into gun-stocks for the army. The flower-walk is a worthy successor to the avenue, and gives great scope to the gardener’s skill and sense of colour, from early spring, with its hyacinths, daffodils, narcissi and tulips, to late autumn, when the bedding out plants, which have afforded innocent delight to hundreds of thousands, are distributed among the poor, and thus continue their sphere of usefulness by brightening the homes of the recipients. If the reader will turn to Roque’s Map, he will see, just where the Marble Arch now stands, a “Stone where soldiers are shot.” And it was a place for military executions, and the shooting of two sergeants for desertion, etc., is thus described by Draper in 1751:--