294 THE GARDENER. [July 



10. So far as regards any form of application during the summer 

 months, I do not give any opinion until it has been tried. 



11. In my simplicity I previously suggested that it would have been 

 desirable for horticulturists to have had two houses similar to No. 1 

 house started at the same time — one of them treated in the usual old- 

 fashioned way, with alternate light and darkness, and the other treated 

 with solar light by day and electric light by night, but both of them 

 heated with hot-water apparatus, and the work respectively done by 

 them properly compared and measured up. I regret to have to say 

 there is no probability of that being adopted. 



12. So far as regards a combined application of electric light as a 

 motive power to purposes of horticulture as well as agriculture, it is 

 not desirable for many reasons, into which it is not worth while 

 entering. 



At present the electric light at Sherwood has ceased burning, and 

 its consideration by me stands adjourned to another year {D. V.) 



Lux VENIT AB ALTO. 



Maij 19, 1881. 



NOTES. 



" Consider the Lilies.'^ — Thackeray in one of his books made a very 

 nice little sketch of a small boy vigorous in urging his home-made 

 boat across a tiny pool with the breath of his own lungs. " Urging 

 the sail of his own work " was the legend below the wood-engraving. 

 So on reading Dr Wallace's notes on p. 276 of last month's ' Gardener,' 

 it occurred to me that there are others who, like Thackeray's small boy, 

 are adepts at urging the sale of their own goods. Of course Dr Wallace's 

 motives in writing to the ' Gardener ' were of the best ; but I very much 

 question the taste which prompted him to advertise his own " New Plant 

 and Bulb Company," and to stigmatise a brother nurseryman's bond fide 

 advertisement as a misleading one. How an advertisement which offers 

 certain Lily bulbs at a stated price can mislead any one it is difficult to 

 see. It is quite different when a nurseryman offers you Lily bulbs 

 at a certain price, and when you give the order for them he neglects 

 to send them ; or when he advertises a good plant, and on your order- 

 ing it he sends you another thing altogether ! 



I know a good many people who now purchase their Lily bulbs at 

 the London auction-rooms, where I have myself bought all the good 

 and generally expensive kinds very cheaply. Good sound bulbs of 

 Lilium auratum at 30s. to 50s. per hundred is cheap enough, and not 

 unfrequently the best and largest bulbs may be purchased at that 

 rate. 



Of course a "fairly good representative collection" may be bought 

 for three guineas — no one disputed that. For the same sum I can get 

 a " fairly good representative collection " of Orchids, Ferns, or Stove- 



