THE 



June, 1859. 



N our last month's notice of the proceedings of the 

 Horticultural Society, we informed our readers of the 

 sale of the house in Regent Street, und of the intended 

 conversion of the Chiswick Gardens into an experimental 

 ground for the testing, chiefly, of vegetables and fruits. 

 The anniversary of the Society took place on the 2nd 

 of May last, when the council for the ensuing year 

 were elected, and a Report from the council submitted 

 to the meeting. The first clause in the Report informs the public 

 of the difficulty the Society has always experienced in " making 

 income and expenditure balance each other, owing to the heavy 

 expenses of London and Chiswick, and the continued losses sus- 

 tained by the exhibitions." The Report then recapitulates the acts of the 

 council in continuing the exhibitions on a more attractive scale, which 

 also proved a loss, the exhibitions of 1857 having cost £800 beyond the 

 receipts. Again, in 1858-9 the exhibitions cost above £500 over the 

 receipts, " the principal of which loss is chargeable to the garden." The 

 voluntary subscription of £307-1 185. was not sufficient to enable the 

 council to meet the losses, for there was a steady decrease in the number 

 of visitors, and the council felt at last justified in abandoning the garden 

 as a place of popular attraction. From that moment it was determined^ to 

 convert the garden into a school of practice and experiment for ascertaining 

 the true qualities of new varieties of fruit and esculent plants, the pre- 

 servation of fruit-trees of established merit, and the propagation of plants 

 for distribution among the fellows. "These measures are all in active 

 operation," says the Report, and we may shortly expect the revival of the 

 Society's Journal, not in its former shape, but in a form attended with but 

 little expense. 



In regard to the sale of the library, so much regretted in all horticul- 

 tural circles, the coimcil says, " scarcely more than twenty fellows ever 

 consulted it diuing the year." For meetings at the garden, exhibitions 

 at St. James's Hall will be substituted, and ballots for plants will more 

 frequently take place among the fellows, and "they expect that the 

 fellows will receive a more substantial return than hitherto for their sub- 



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