114 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



the personal interests bound up with it. This sum was made up of the 

 following items : — Annual subscriptions, £616 75. ; donations received at 

 annual dinner, £330 3^. 6d. ; moiety of legacy from the late C. Palmer, 

 Esq., £26 13^. 4d.; dividends on stock, £139 195. 2d. ; advertisements 

 inserted in society's reports, £48 lis. 6 J. The society paid in pensions 

 £723. The sum of £187 2s. 6d. was invested in consols; the expenses of 

 management were £133 17s. lid. ; that is about twelve per cent, on the 

 income. The society's fu.nded stock now amounts to £5100. There were 

 on the society's books, as recipients of pensions, on the 1st of Jamiary last, 

 fifty-one pensioners, of whom twenty were females, receiving a total of 

 £240, and thirty-one males, receiving £496. In the list of pensioners 

 there are five persons over eighty years of age, thirty-two over seventy 

 years of age, and the rest are all over sixty, except one, who became eli- 

 gible through total blindness. 



There are reasons, over and above those which would attach to the case 

 merely as a gardeners' benevolent society, why support should be liberally 

 given by all classes of the community. To the working gardener the so- 

 ciety may fairly appeal as a place of possible refuge, should calamity over- 

 take him befoi'e he has been able to make a provision for his family ; and 

 it may appeal, too, as a source of help to his widow in the event of death 

 seizing him in the midst of his active labours. It should be an encourage- 

 ment to gardeners to set aside a portion of their earnings for so laudable a 

 purpose, that those who have subscribed fifteen years consecutively, or 

 their widows, have the preference, in the event of a competition for elec- 

 tion where some of the candidates have not subscribed. And the man who 

 considers himself so safe that he will never need the help of such an insti- 

 tution, or so independent that he would never resort to it, may well con- 

 sider that among his brother gardeners there are man.y not so happily cir- 

 cumstanced, to whom, by the ordinary ties that unite men in kindred 

 occupations, he OAves it as a duty to assist in furnishing a relief fund for 

 distress. There are many in the list of pensioners who, when hale and 

 young, had similar thoughts; and in this day of improving thrift and 

 active benevolence, gardeners must act on Nelson's inotto, that " England 

 expects every man to do his duty." 



Of course such a society will largely depend on the patrons of garden- 

 ing, who have more means and generally a better appreciation of the neces- 

 sity of such institutions. It should be sufficient vindication of the case 

 that those who come as candidates to this fund have done their share in 

 life's battle to fulfil the demands of a life of industry, and have also helped 

 in their several capacities to forward the interests of horticultural science, 

 in the results of which we all participate. But there is another reason 

 why the patrons of horticulture should come forward liberally, and increase 

 the list of annual subscribers, and that is, that gardeners are not overpaid ; 

 too often underpaid, when it is considered that the occupation calls for a 

 large amount of practical knowledge, incessant exercise of progressive skill, 

 and entails anxieties such as only those who feel them can estimate ade- 

 quately. If general reasons are needed, we may add that the society is 

 admirably managed, and that a good working committee is ably seconded 

 by the energetic secretary, Mr. E. R. Cutler. We trust tlie friends of the 

 society will muster in good force at the forthcoming festival, that many 

 new friends may appear with them, and that the subscriptions for so laud- 

 able a purpose may be equal to the demands made upon the society's 



