THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 

 Your readers will remember that in your two last numbers allusion 

 was made to the position of this Society. In your January number, 

 you offered some opinion on the steps the Council were then taking, and 

 pointed out that a Committee of Inquiry was imperatively called for, 

 to investigate and report on the Society's affairs, beibre allowing the 

 Council to abandon the garden at Chisvvick, a step which that body 

 seems to all to be extremely anxious to take, for reasons well under- 

 stood by others as well as myself In your February number appeared 

 two letters, both of them from Fellows of the Society, and your readers 

 and every Fellow of the Society particularly, should look carefully into 

 the statements therein made by ]\lr. Edwards, as he shows at a glance a 

 system of extravagance and mismanagement, which would soon entail 

 insolvency on the most flourishing institution, and this too at a season 

 when the Society's affairs were in anything but a prosperous state, and 

 when a corresponding amount of economy and prudence should have dic- 

 tated the proceedings of its officers. But this is not all. Horticultural 

 exhibitions, like all other exhibitions of a pubhc nature, can only be 

 kept up by liberal patronage. The day is gone by when gentlemen or 

 their gardeners will interest themselves by growing plants and fruits, at 

 a loss to themselves, for the mere sake of obtaining honorary medals, or 

 an equivalent in cash, which makes their chance — even if successful — 

 a loss individually ; while to those competitors who stand lower in the 

 prize Ust, the trouble and expense of cultivation for exhibition are thrown 

 away, and they lose in proportion as they descend in the scale of 

 success. This should not be. Prizes should be given which will allow 

 a fair chance for rising cultivators, who may require only time to enable 

 them to compete successfully, but whose energies are damped by having 

 to enter the lists when a positive loss is certain, even to the extent ^of 

 including the transit of plants to the exhibitions. Gardeners are by no 

 means a wealthy body, and many a young gardener, anxious to show 

 what he can do, is prevented by the pecuniary loss he must sustain. 

 With these observations, I beg every exhibiting gardener to look at 

 the statement given by Mr. Edwards of the cost of niedals for three 

 years awarded to exhibitors, and the expenses incurred in gelling up 

 the shows : — a sum so utterly beyond what really is necessary, that no 

 wonder the Society found its exhibitions unprofitable, as I find the 

 charge for holding each exhibition approximates so closely on the 

 amount awarded for medals, that I may as well state the amounts to 

 be nearly the same. With these facts before us, we need not feel 

 surprise that a meagre list of prizes was given ; while, through the 

 mismanagement of those superintending these exhibitions, an expense 

 twofold what it ought to have been was incurred, and this sum, under 

 good management, would have materially assisted in making a prize 

 list that would have induced far greater competition, and a spirit of 

 content amongst the exhibiting body — a feeling that has not been 

 experienced lately at Chiswick. I may be told that the mere increase 

 of prizes does not always command close competition, as the Society 



