FEBRUARY. 37 



each show. Under the head of " Miscellaneous labour beyond the 

 ordinary service of garden," I find a charge of 211/. 16s. 8d., or 

 23/. 10s. 9d. per show — the wages of nearly 100 workmen for the day 

 at labour prices, beyond winch, there are the heavy items for carpenters, 

 painters, tent-pitchers, timber, and repairs, amounting to 550/. 10s. 8(/., 

 or 61/. 3s. 4f/. per show. Prodigious! 23/. per show represents the 

 cost of " Police," and every other charge is in proportion — I ought to 

 have said out of all proportion. It is useless to analyse the expenditure 

 more closely. The figures (with the exception of the averages) are not 

 mine. I have simply copied them from the latest published accounts 

 of the Society ; they tell their own tale, and a very pretty state of 

 affairs they, to my thinking, unfold. 



In the " National Garden Almanack," just issued, I have given 

 expression to my honest and candid conviction relative to the discour- 

 teous treatment exhibitors have received from the Society ; and I hold, 

 the letter published in the Gardeners' Chronicle of Jan. 12th, 

 signed " F. H. S.," to be under a veil too thin for us not to receive it as 

 emanating from a spirit closely allied to those who have so long held 

 paramount power — and used it too — against exhibitors. I fear that all 

 hope of change must be considered as past. 



Wace Cottage, HoUomay, Jan. 18. 



John Edwards. 



In the Gardeners" Chronicle of January 12th, there appeared a 

 letter fi-om an old Fellow of the Horticultural Society of "thirty-five 

 years' standing," on the present crisis in the affairs of the Society, well 

 calculated, I think, to cause the Council to exclaim " Save us from our 

 friends." The object of " F. H. S.," the writer, appears to be three- 

 fold : first, to proclaim his own foresight, as he says he always felt the 

 maintenance of the Garden to be beyond the Society's strength, and he 

 has always refused to support it; secondly, to express his "joy at the 

 present crisis in the affairs of the Society, because the proposals of the 

 Council are rational, and better calculated to promote gardening than 

 a costly garden and public shows ; " and thirdly, to throw a little dirt 

 in a sly manner at the exhibitors, saying that the shows "have degene- 

 rated into something very like a race-course, for people will no longer 

 exhibit for honour or the sake of horticulture only, but purely and 

 simply for the money they can make." But, alas ! his joy is but 

 short-lived, for he states, in a subsequent part of his letter, that the 

 (" rational ") propositions of the Council embrace the continuance of 

 the shows, only changing their ground ; this, he says, is very wrong, 

 and recommends the Council to leave these (degenerated) shows to 

 their " friends " in the Regent's Park and at Sydenham, but, with sin- 

 gular inconsistency, he admits that the shows, which he stigmatises as 

 degenerate, " have been carried to a pitch of perfection the like of 



