London is such a wide word, it is difficult to set a limit, and to decide what open spaces actually belong to London. As the town stretches away into the country, it is impossible to see the boundaries of London. The line must be drawn near where the chimney-pots become incessant, and the stems of the trees become black. But the degree of blackness, dirt, and density is impossible to decide; so a prosaic, matter-of-fact, but necessary rule has been adhered to in the following pages, of keeping as strictly as possible to the actual defined limits of the County of London. Therefore all the parks owned by the City Corporation or London County Council outside this limit have not been dealt with, and such places as Chiswick, Kew, Richmond, or Gunnersbury have been omitted.
[Amherst's demarcation of London's boundary by chimney pots and black tree trunks was made obsolete by the change from coal to oil, gas and electricity for heating, lighting and power. This happened after the Clean Air Act of 1956. TT]
