No address. In the hand of J.D. Hooker, possibly a page separated from a letter. Manuscript
The floods are dreadful; they have four fine steam engines constantly at work keeping the water out of the stoke holes, where the stokers work half way up to the knees in water; the herbaceous grounds are inundated and the river wall is carried away; all cesspools are choked and in a dreadful way and will be until drainage is opened again to the Thames; Oliver’s [Daniel Oliver, librarian of the Kew Herbarium] basement is flooded; Smith [John Smith, curator at Kew] is indefatigable but it is laborious and heart-breaking work; most garden work has been impeded for six weeks; until they got the steam fire engines from London they were paying £14 a night to pumpers and feeding them too; they were working the night through in the open air in the torrential rain for water. Undated [c.Feb 1877; a similar description of floods at Kew in January and February 1877 is found in J.D. Hooker’s ‘Report on the progress and conditions of the Royal Gardens at Kew during the year 1877’, 1 Jan 1878]