In this age of experiments in plant growing, when American writers glow with enthusiasm on the wonders of the “New Earth,” and when science has transformed the dullest operations of farming and gardening into fields for enterprise and treasuries of possible discoveries, it is humiliating to find the water in Hyde Park being used for like experiments as long ago as 1691–92. Stephen Switzer, a gardener, who would have been described by his contemporaries as a “lover of ingenuities,” was fond of indulging in speculations, and studied the effect of water on plants. He quotes a series of experiments made by Dr. Woodward on growing plants entirely in water, or with certain mixtures. For fifty-two days during the summer of 1692 he carefully watched some plants of spearmint, which were all “the most kindly, fresh, sprightly Shoots I could chuse,” and were set in water previously weighed. For this trial he selected “Hyde Park Conduit water”--one pure, another had an ounce and a half of common garden earth added to it, a third was given an equal quantity of garden mould, and a fourth was kept on “Hyde Park water distilled.” The results in growth, and the quantity of water absorbed, were carefully noted at the end of the time. [Illustration: DOLPHIN FOUNTAIN IN HYDE PARK] When Queen Caroline conceived the idea of throwing the ponds in Hyde Park into one, and making a sheet of water, the school of “natural” or “landscape” gardening was becoming the rage. Bridgeman, a well-known garden designer, who had charge of the royal gardens, has the credit of having invented the “ha-ha” or sunk fence, and thus led the way for merging gardens into parks. Kent, who followed him, went still further. He, Horace Walpole said, “leaped the fence, and saw that all Nature was a garden.” The fashions in garden design soon change, and the work of a former generation is quickly obliterated. William III. brought with him the fashion of Dutch gardening, and laid out Kensington Gardens in that style. Switzer, writing twenty-five years later, says the fault of the Dutch gardeners was “the Pleasure Gardens being stuffed too thick with Box”; they “used it to a fault, especially in England, where we abound in so much good Grass and Gravel.” London and Wise, very famous nursery gardeners, who made considerable changes at Hampton Court, and laid out the grounds of half the country seats in England, had charge of Kensington Palace Gardens, and housed the “tender greens” during the winter in their nurseries hard by. These celebrated Brompton nurseries were so vast that the Kensington plants took up “but little room in comparison with” those belonging to the firm. Queen Mary took great interest in the new gardens. “This active Princess lost no time, but was either measuring, directing, or ordering her Buildings, but in Gard’ning, especially Exoticks, she was particularly skill’d, and allowed Dr. Pluknet £200 per ann. for his Assistance therein.” After his queen’s death William III.