He held the office from 1848 to 1887. During his later years the Garden gradually declined for want of funds, and after his death no new appointment was made by the Apothecaries, and a labourer looked after the grounds. With the advent of the new authority and great expansion of work, the office was once more bestowed on a competent man, William Hales, the present Curator, who ably maintains the old traditions of the garden. One of the institutions of early days which has had to be discontinued was the “herborising.” Expeditions in search of herbs were undertaken by the students, in company of their teacher, in the neighbourhood. After 1834, owing to the spread of London, these excursions had to be abandoned. The famous cedars were planted in Watt’s time, and from contemporary references to them, there seems no doubt that they were the first to be grown in England. John Evelyn in his “Sylva” in 1663, writing of the cedar, says, “Why should it not thrive in Old England?” and Ray is astonished in 1684 to see the young trees flourishing at Chelsea without protection. They are shown in a plan of the Garden in 1753 (the year of Sir Hans Sloane’s death) at the four corners of a pond, which no longer remains in the same position. Eighteen years later the two furthest from the river were cut down (1771), “being in a decayed state” (and no wonder) from the rough usage they had been subjected to. The timber, 133¾ feet, was sold at 2s. 8d. a foot, and, together with the branches, the trees fetched £23, 9s. 8d. The two specimens nearest the river were for nearly a hundred years a conspicuous object, although much injured by snow in 1809. By 1871, only one remained, and, in a report of the Garden seven years later, it was said to be in a “dying condition.” At the time the new Management Committee came into office, that one was quite dead. They left the tree standing until the fungi on it became a danger to the rest of the trees in the Garden, when most reluctantly it was felled in March 1904, all the sound parts of the timber being carefully preserved. Miller gives a good account of them in his time. “The four trees,” he writes, “(which as I have been credibly informed) were planted there in the year 1683, and at that time were not above three feet high; two of which Trees are at this time (viz. 1757) upwards of eleven feet and a Half in girt, at two Feet above ground, and thereby afford a goodly shade in the hotest Season of the Year.” He goes on to point out that they were planted so near the pond, which was bricked up to within two feet of them, that the roots could not spread on one side. Whether the water was good for them he is not sure, but feels certain it was injurious to cramp the roots. The two specimens nearest the green-house had had some of their branches lopped off, to prevent their shading the grass, and suffered in consequence. Though one remained for nearly 150 years after Miller