214 THE FLORIST. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 

 Our correspondent, Mr. Wilson, suggests a sketch, to illustrate the plan 

 of ventilating the upper angle of span-roofed houses, in the manner 

 recommended by our correspondent in his article on fruit houses, pub- 

 lished last year. Unavoidable reasons have delayed our publishing 

 wood engravings of cheap sashes and glazing, when the subject of venti- 

 lation would have been explained. We hope soon to fulfil our promise. 

 The article on perennials has attention this month ; in the meantime, 

 as these useful though neglected plants are now in full glory, collectors 

 should examine the London and other nurseries, to see what is in 

 bloom, and make their notes of time of blooming, colour of flower and 

 height, when they will be prepared for a basis for arrangement when 

 planting time comes. Kew should also be visited. 



SECOND GRAND NATIONAL ROSE SHOW. 

 If ever the Queen of Flowers should hold a court, and require a 

 champion to proclaim her dignities, and to maintain the rightful position 

 which she holds against all comers, there can be no doubt that she 

 would select for that purpose — parson though he be — the Rev. Reynolds 

 Hole, of Caunton Manor ; for to him she is indebted for the proud 

 position which she has occupied these last two seasons, and to him, 

 mainly do the knights and esquires of her floral majesty owe the 

 magnificent display which was brought together on the 23rd ult., at 

 Hanover Square Rooms ; and, in truth, I for one should be very sorry 

 to have to meet the weight of that brawny arm of his ; though after 

 the glorious assemblage that greeted one's optic and olfactory nerves 

 there, he would be a daring man who would put forward the claims of 

 any other flower to usurp her position. As one's eye rested on the 

 long lines of cut flowers, relieved by the pot Roses of Messrs. Paul and 

 Mr. Francis, one felt how nobly the Rose had claimed and held her 

 pre-eminence, while an insight into the individual flowers clearly pro- 

 claimed that its cultivation was progressing more rapidly than one could 

 have imagined. All misgivings, too, which I suppose most of us felt 

 in the month of May, as we looked on the scorched and crumpled 

 shoots of our trees, were banished, and the conclusion must be arrived 

 at, that no matter what the season, so many and so ardent are the 

 growers of the flower, that we are sure of a good exhibition. 



That the season was a most unfavourable one up to the period of 

 which I speak, all would agree ; and though in some places the 

 recovery during the last three weeks has been something extraordinary, 

 yet the fact was evidenced by the absence from the show of Mr. 

 Rivers entirely, as a non-competitor, and of Mr. Cranston, who so 

 nobly won his spurs last year, as an exhibitor ; probably another week 

 would have made a great difference ; but when the day was fixed this 

 year, everything being in so forward a state, the arrangers of the show 

 were justified in making it a week earlier, although perhaps, on the 

 whole, the 1st of July is a better day. We get few such hot seasons as 

 last in this country, and the later day enables those who live in cold 

 and exposed situations to be more on a level with their more favoured 

 brethren of Hertfordshire and the south. 



