Of course the place is public, and the crowd is therefore mixed. It is not as aristocratic, for instance, as the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, or the lawn for the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown; but then it is not one day in the year, but any and every Sunday during the warmer months, that these people may be found congregated together. Two o’clock being the ordinary luncheon hour, there is a general exodus a little before that time, and it was amusing in 1906 to notice the people all endeavouring to engage the smart public motor landaulettes and hansoms which plied for hire at Hyde Park Corner for the first time. They were a new invasion—one that quickly found favour in the eyes of the public, followed a year later by taximeter cabs. After tea on Sundays in the summer the Park fills again. People stroll in to have chats with their friends or rest in the cool shade; and again those thousands of chairs are occupied. It is curious how the classes divide themselves. Between the Achilles Monument and the Serpentine is a bandstand, round which a certain proportion of the seats are railed off. In the summer evenings excellent music is given, but very few of the upper-ten avail themselves of the privilege which the middle classes so eagerly enjoy. It is a great occasion for shop people and servants, who seem to thoroughly revel in those Sunday Concerts, which each year prove more and more successful. The year passes in Hyde Park like the figures in a kaleidoscope. In January, when it is dark in the mornings and cold in the evenings, the riders come out about ten, and the drivers, dwindled in numbers, mostly vacate their vehicles and take a quiet walk before luncheon. All is cold and damp and drear. Then come the early spring flowers. Yellow, white, or purple crocuses raise their heads in the Park. They are not planted in beds or in stiff rows; but come up in patches of colour in the grass. Here a mass of yellow, there a mass of heliotrope, filling the air with the early cry of spring. These crocuses, in themselves a joy, are quickly followed by daffodils, narcissi, and groups of gorse and broom. Then the leaves unfold upon the trees, laburnum fights pinky-brown copper beech, horse-chestnuts raise their blooms, hawthorn scents the air, and lilac abounds. Then it is that the hyacinth beds become a dream along the precincts of Park Lane, giving forth sweet scents and glorious masses of colour. Flower beds were first instituted in Hyde Park in 1860. Rhododendrons burst into flower, quickly followed by those gorgeous beds of yellow azalea that we, who love the Park, know so well. The bedding plants for Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, and St. James’s Park are largely supplied from the nursery gardens near the Ranger’s Lodge in the centre of the Park itself, and not from Kew, as is ordinarily supposed. In the autumn these plants are given away to the poor of the parishes who care to apply for them.