Indeed, almost the sole attempt has been the construction of the waterfall trickling between the boulders, and the pool, covered in summer with green growth, below the Serpentine’s steep bank. It is pretty enough, and quite a paradise for the birds and rabbits, to whom the railed-in enclosure is sacred, and yet it appears oddly out of keeping with the surroundings. It seems to have been an experiment at artificial decoration which has not been repeated. The flatness of the ground generally has no doubt set limitations on the work of the landscape gardener; and where the space is so large, the natural is better than the artificial landscape. One need not be a botanist to admire the endless variety of the trees alone—their grotesque trunks and tapering stems; their leaves, so divergent in form and structure; the blooms that in season conceal the wealth of the green by a mass of bright colour, and when the chestnut spikes break out, Hyde Park can almost rival for a week or two the famous avenue in Bushey Park. Earlier in the year, when the trees are throwing out their fresh green leaves, the almond blossom glows, the grass looks fresh, and the daffodils and narcissi give hope of coming achievement. Possibly Hyde Park possesses no trees so ancestral as the old elm which stands on the edge of the lake in the neighbourhood of St. James’s Park, beneath which the monks at Westminster are said to have fished for a Friday’s meal. It still bears leaves, and though its roots are plastered up, seems likely to thrive for many years. But there is at least one patriarch, an old oak stump covered with ivy, on the right side of the water near the superintendent’s house, to which an interesting story attaches. It is said that the tree was raised from an acorn gathered from the celebrated Boscobel oak, in which Charles II. concealed himself after the battle of Worcester in 1651. Held up by props, with its trunk devoid of bark, and cracked in all directions, it survives as a relic of bygone days. Every kind of tree is here,—the elm, the lime, the beech, the common ash, the plane, and many besides. No tree flourishes so well in London as the plane, which will grow in little soil, and seems to possess a marvellous capacity for withstanding drought. It attains a great height, has a wide-spreading head, a massive trunk, and sheds the bark, which falls off in large irregular patches every year, giving a striking character to the tree. Not only hardy, the plane is one of the most attractive of all trees. There are also some fine copper beeches. A young German who was in London was much impressed by all he saw, and one day at his boarding-house he waxed warm on the beautiful vegetation in Hyde Park, which he rightly designated as “the best in the world.” “The ladies are lovely,” he said. “I do not know which are the most lovely, the ladies or the bloody beeches.”