12. With regard to the ground in the neighbourhood of Battersea proposed to be purchased by the Government, and to be converted into a park to be called Battersea Park, the Lords of the Treasury are of course aware that only a small proportion of the whole area has as yet been purchased; and the Commissioners found on inquiry that this proportion consists of numerous small detached pieces, utterly insufficient to accommodate a building of the contemplated size, and separated from each other by intervening plots of ground, many of them in a state of high cultivation, and belonging to a great number of different proprietors, with whom it would be absolutely impossible to effect arrangements within any time which would afford the slightest chance of the Commissioners being put in possession of a site in time to complete their building by the spring of next year. It should be added that the site of this district is very low, a great portion of it being some feet under high-water mark, and that the nature of the soil presents serious objections to its use as a building-ground. 13. Victoria Park is situated in an inconvenient and not very accessible part of the town. It would, moreover, be impossible to erect in it a building of the required size without most seriously interfering with the plantations and ornamental water which have been recently laid out there; thus inflicting on the classes for whose recreation that park has been opened an inconvenience infinitely more serious than could be caused to the frequenters of the very much larger area of Hyde Park by the proposed occupation of a comparatively small portion of it. 14. Lastly, as regards Wormwood Scrubbs, besides that the distance is a very serious objection, the rights of the commoners in that locality would prevent its appropriation; and the Commissioners are advised that it would be impossible to erect the building there without risk, as any single commoner would have it in his power to interrupt the proceedings, and to cause them to be discontinued at any stage of the work, however advanced. Similar objections apply to Wandsworth and some other commons in the neighbourhood of London, which have been occasionally mentioned as possible sites. 14_a_. As regards Primrose Hill and the Isle of Dogs, the want of level space on the former, and the objectionable situation and dampness of the latter, render them so obviously unsuitable as to make any particular observations unnecessary.