years, and I am sure that the great interest he takes in London Rooks will induce him to pardon me for these my remarks. To come to details, it might be inferred from his statement that the Rookery in the gardens of the old Green-Park Lodge ceased to exist soon after the death of the Princess Amelia. This inference would be erroneous. That lady died in 1810, but the house was for a long time after inhabited by Lady William Gordon, the widow of a Deputy-Ranger of the Park. I well remember it, and the high wall which, surrounding its garden, rendered the adjoining part of Piccadilly a most inconvenient strait. The house, I believe, had long been doomed, but in deference to its tenant its destruction was delayed. In 1841 Lady William died, and 1 think (though of this I am not quite sure) that, it was immediately pulled down. Still the enclosed grounds and the nuisance of the high wall remained. There was the usual amount of "writing to 'The Times,'" and the usual number of questions in the House of Commons on the subject. At last public opinion was full}' made up, and in the eventful session of 1844 a Bill, known as the 'Piccadilly Improvements Bill,' was passed through Parliament by the Government, the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests being then (if I am not mistaken) Lord Lincoln, afterwards Duke of Newcastle. This Bill, "to widen and improve Piccadilly," received the Royal Assent on the 9th August in that year, and thus became 'Act 7 and 8 Vict. cap. 88.' One of its principal objects was declared to be the making of" the said street called Piccadilly from Bolton Street to Park Lane of an uniform width of Seventy Feet or thereabouts." Its effect was the pulling down of the dead wall and the taking of a considerable slice off the garden of the former Ranger's Lodge, while the rest of the garden was thrown into the Park. The line of plane-trees which still exists along the south side of the foot-pavement was preserved, at the instance, I remember then to have heard, of the late Sir Robert Peel;* but a large number of the trees in the heretofore private grounds were felled, and among them some or all of those which formed the Rookery. Whither the Rooks which had inhabited these trees went, or whether they immediately took their departure I know not; but Dr. Hamilton's supposition that they then established the Rookery in Wharncliffe Gardens can hardly be correct. 1 do not
Mr. Wheatley, howerer, ascribes ('Round about Piccadilly,' p. 257) the suggestion
of keeping the trees to the late Sir Charles Barry.
