I873-] GREENHOUSE AND STOVE PLANTS. 89 



amateur gardener of half a century's standing. From old associations and kindly- 

 feeling, I have free welcome to the numerous gardens in the land of flowers 

 where I live, and converse often with master, mate, and man. Being interested 

 in the subject, I have read much of what has been written respecting the low 

 wages of both skilled and unskilled gardeners. I have many men in my employ, 

 most of them hard-working but uneducated men. Most of them receive more 

 weekly than an ordinary skilled gardener. While out in the autumn, I made in- 

 quiries, and found really clev^er gardeners working for ISs. jier week ; and my 

 friends told me, as evidence of the rise in wages, that a skilled gardener was 

 not now to be obtained for less than 21s. I have pondered on this matter again 

 and again, while reading the various plans and suggestions. I am always met 

 by the irrepressible and inexorable law of supply and demand ; and I fear — not- 

 withstanding all the clever wiiting on the subject, much of which, though it may 

 grow in the book, won't grow in the garden — the endeavour to make twenty 

 situations satisfy twenty-four applicants, will have no greater success than the 

 trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. Some would say, ' ' As you are so ready 

 to find fault with others, what would your wisdom suggest ? " I will answer the 

 question by stating, that although a man, clever with hand and head, with the 

 ^spade finds life a struggle in the old country, he is the salt of the earth in the 

 new. And if those intelligent men who write on this subject in your and other 

 papers would combine with others to obtain every kind of information which 

 can be gathered as to the best way to arrive at the point where the " spade " is 

 in demand, and keep the rising generation fully and constantly informed how to 

 obtain assistance, where to go, where friends from same quarter have gone be- 

 fore, keeping up a correspondence with those who have formed a suitable loca- 

 tion, — they will find, if this information is widely spread, the young men who 

 now are constantly struggling to push their elders out of their situations will 

 seek their fortunes in wider fields and with more success. Down South. 



PRIZES FOR GROUPS OF GREENHOUSE AND 

 STOVE PLANTS. 



Your correspondent, A. Leslie Melville, writing on the above subject in last 

 number, says he staged from forty to fifty plants on a space 6 feet by 6. Surely 

 there must have been a mistake in figures somewhere, or the plants must have 

 been very small indeed. But apart from that, the idea is a very good one, and 

 one that I have advocated for years. An immense deal of trouble and time 

 is saved ; and, moreover, a greater variety of plants can be brought forward. 

 Indeed, a number of very fine things can be shown in a group that other- 

 wise would never be seen on a show-table. In 1870, the Dundee Horticul- 

 tural Society offered prizes for two groups of stove and greenhouse plants, 

 twenty-five and fifteen respectively. Exhibitors for the twenty-five were excluded 

 from the fifteen. I was chief mover for the above prizes, but it met with deter- 

 mined opposition among the members of the Society, and all sorts of consequences 

 were to follow ; yet the show turned out to be the best ever seen in Dundee. I 

 said at the time that, taking the show as a whole, it was the best I had ever seen. 

 The groups were a grand feature. The lot shown by myself, which came in 

 first, occuj)ied a space nearly 18 feet by 8. The others were much about 

 the same. In 1871, the number was reduced to fifteen and ten respectively, 

 the space occupied being not very much less, as the plants brought forward 



