But of all Lindley's public works that which he undertook for the saving of Kew from destruction is of the most immediate interest to botanists. In 1838 a small committee consisting of Lindley, Paxton and J. Wilson (gardener to the Earl of Surrey) were commissioned to report on the state of the Royal Gardens. After exposing the incompetence and extravagance of the then administration Lindley recommended that the Royal Gardens, Kew, should be made over to the nation and should become the headquarters of botanical science for England, its Colonies and Dependencies. Is it due to our lack of gratitude or to our mistrust of sculptors, that no statue of Lindley stands in the grounds of Kew? In 1840 John Lindley was able to write to Sir William Hooker: "It is rumoured that you are appointed to Kew. If so I shall have still more reason to rejoice at the determination I took to oppose the barbarous Treasury scheme of destroying the place; for I of course was aware that the stand I made and the opposition I created would destroy all possibility of my receiving any appointment." Having regard to the part which Lindley played in preserving Kew from the devastating clutches of the politicians it is but fit that that Institution should contain the most valuable of Lindley's scientific possessions, his orchid herbarium,--that his general herbarium is at Cambridge may be news to such Cambridge botanists as in the days of a decade or two ago learned Botany without such adventitious aids. In 1864 Lindley wrote to the late Sir Joseph Hooker to say that he had made up his mind to sell his herbarium and would prefer that the Orchids went to Kew. There it is preserved, a monument of Lindley's skill and industry and of inestimable value to the systematist. Besides the actual specimens it contains coloured drawings of the flowers of all the species that came under his observation in the living state. In addition to the herbarium, Kew possesses a large amount of Lindley's scientific correspondence; letters to W. J. Hooker, 1828-1859 (230), 182 letters to Bentham and 35 to Henslow, and others to which reference has been made already: altogether an invaluable mass of correspondence, selections from which it is to be hoped may some day see the light of publication.