74 



JOUBNAL OF HOETICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAKDENEK. 



[ July 31, 1873. 



modation could make us. We do not seem, I am bound 

 to say with all regret, to have made others comfortable, 

 though, as the following anecdote will show. That great 

 rosarian who swept the board this year at the Crystal Palace, 

 taking three first prizes in the amateur classes, and one in the 

 open — that monarch of the amateurs and your humble servant 

 were accommodated in two rooms leading one from the other, 

 and were called at the early hour of six. We talked and 

 laughed without dreaming of doing anybody the slightest in- 

 jury. But our ignorance on this point was soon enlightened, 

 for just before we left Gloucester a friend who had met with 

 the same ill-luck at Bristol, told us that there were the most 

 serious complaints against us, and he did not know whether 

 we should be allowed to leave. It appears an old gentleman 

 had come down to breakfast in a great state of distress, not to 

 say anger, and accosted the waiter with the question, " Did I 

 not ask you to give me a quiet room ?" " Yessir, and so we 

 did, the best in the house." " No, you did not ; you put mo in 

 one next to where two men were sleeping, who did nothing but 

 talk and laugh all night. I believe they were commercials, 

 for they were talking of flowers, and vans, and telegraphing, 

 and of taking a nursery." Our friend here interrupted, saying 

 we, at least, were gentlemen, one was a clergyman, and the 

 other one of the greatest cultivators of the queen of flowers. 

 " But, no," said the aggrieved man, " they were commerciah, 

 and one of them had such a terrible loud voice." With this 

 embarrassing piece of intelligence we departed, and after much 

 labour staged our blooms in the Shire HaU. And then how 

 we were repaid, not, I do not mean with prizes, though we 

 had our share of them, but with the Roses exhibited by others. 



When the HaU was cleared, and we commenced to judge 

 the nurserymen's classes, I do not think we ever had a greater 

 treat ; I know I never had. Mr. Cranston showed magnifi- 

 cently ; his seventy-two singles and his forty-eight trebles 

 surpassed anything I have ever seen ; while, to cap all, ho had 

 positively staged twenty-four blooms of Horace Vernet, each 

 Bose of which was as large and as perfect in form as the 

 finest Charles Lefebvre I have ever seen. Now, down here we 

 cannot grow this Bose. Mr. Keynes has given up cultivating 

 it ; Mr. Baker, I believe, can rarely show it ; I can only get it 

 as large as a half-crown piece ; but here Mr. Cranston gave U8 

 twenty-tour specimens, each bloom faultless, standing high up 

 from the moss, with the most luxuriant foliage it is possible 

 to imagine. " Hurrah tor the Manetti stock!" I cried, and 

 Mr. Baker and Mr. Charles Turner, the two other Judges, echoed 

 the cry, " Hurrah for the Manetti stock ! " ; for our friend was 

 showing almost entirely from that stock. No more can it be 

 said that you cannot give us show blooms, or blooms equal to 

 the maidens on the Briar. I would that the Eev. S. Beynolds 

 Hole could have seen those stands from King's Acre which made 

 the Show something to be never forgotten, and he would, I am 

 sure, in his next edition strike out from his " Book about Eoses" 

 the one blot, to my mind, the one misleading statement, that 

 " the maiden blooms on the Briar are much superior to those 

 on the Manetti ; and that anyone who is compelled to grow 

 Boses only on the latter stock should give up all idea of ex- 

 hibiting." Mr. Turner and Mr. Baker both declared they had 

 never seen anything like those stands in their life, and that 

 they should never forget them. Roses, too, which most of us 

 have long condemned were shown magnificently. Such sorts 

 as Jean Fernet, Prince Henri des Pays Bas, Julie Touvais, 

 Alfred de Eougemont, and others were really superb. The 

 only drawback was that there was so little competition in these 

 classes; Keynes, Paul, and other great men were conspicuous 

 by their absence, to the great and oft-expressed regret of the 

 managers of the Show and general pubhc. Mr. Cant was 

 there, but was by no means in his last year's force, and Mr. 

 Davidson also showed very fairly. Mr. Robert Veitch, of 

 Exeter, too, came to the front, and considering how his blooms 

 had been knocked about on the journey (for he was with us) 

 showed very well. 



Among the amateurs, Mr. Arkwright, of Hampton Court, Here- 

 ford, and the Bev. George Arkwright, of Pencombe, seemed to 

 divide all the best prizes. I managed to get one first prize for 

 twelve blooms of Madame Bothschild, which did the same good 

 office for me last year ; but I only mention this in order to 

 introduce the following good thing. A lady was admiring my 

 box of EothschUd, and turned to me with the remark, " You 

 must have a very strong plant of this variety to show so many 

 blooms." Mr. Baker was second for twenty-four singles, but 

 would have shown very much better but for the ill treatment 

 his boxes experienced on the journey. 



Of all the places where we show the Bose, Hereford, in my 

 humble opinion, is the best and pleasantest. The Shire Hall 

 is admirably adapted for exhibitions of this kind. It is lofty 

 and well ventilated, the arrangements are all good, and superior 

 to any I have seen. There is not the slightest confusion ; 

 your tickets are given you in the form of small adhesive labels, 

 which you fix on your boxes (a red and black number, one 

 showing the class and the other your own number). When 

 your boxes are ready they are taken from the dressing tent by 

 porters to the Shire Hall, and placed in their proper place. 

 You have only to uncover at the last moment, and they are 

 ready for the judges. I believe this is the Leeds system, and 

 if .so, we are all indebted to Leeds, for anyone who was 

 present at the Crystal Palace at the last show will know what 

 confusion there was there from want of some such arrange- 

 ment. Civility, kindness, and hospitality are the rule at 

 Hereford. There is no delivering a few tickets to policemen 

 to give away to their friends as at Bath, while the great hor- 

 ticulturists are ignored ; there is no hot and furious conten- 

 tion with policemen there. On your pass ticket you are in- 

 formed that there will be luncheon ready for you at a certain 

 time, and you have only to present your card to have a most 

 excellent one too. But not only in this way, but in all others 

 is the hospitality of Hereford shown. I had three invitations 

 to houses to stay the night, and my friends the same, and I 

 only wish that we in the west may succeed in starting our 

 Western Counties Rose Show next year, so as to offer an in- 

 ducement to our Hereford friends to come and see us I 

 should like to welcome my friend Mr. Bulmer, who so hospit- 

 ably entertained me ; I sliould like to grasp the hand of that 

 famous rosarian who rules over the King's Acre, and who took 

 me round his beautiful nursery when every moment was pre- 

 cious to him, as on that very day he was staging for Wisbeach. 



And oh ! what a treat we had at that nursery ! Plants ! 

 Messrs. Editors, I had never seen plants till I saw his. Roses ! 

 I had never known what a Rose was capable of till I saw his 

 Manetti Roses. " To think," said Mr. Baker to me, " to 

 think that you and I have been working for years, and yet we 

 have done nothing — nothing that will bear comparison with 

 this." I never have seen such a sight as those acres of Roses 

 presented, and I fear I may never again. Our friend Cranston 

 was in his might — in hia glory. Fisher Holmes was there, 

 shown as large and as perfect as my best Lefebvre ; Horace 



Vernet but, no, I cannot go on. Suffice it to say that Mr. 



Cranston had staged the day before for Hereford, and that 

 morniuij for Wisbeach, and yet he had so many perfect blooms 

 left that we all confessed we had never seen anything in the 

 way of Roses before. Days might profitably have been spent 

 there, and I had only one short hour to give, or I could not 

 have got home that night, and next day I was to show at 

 Frome, and so I was forced to bid adieu to my kind host, but 

 not before he had made me promise to stay with him at the 

 next show. But though I say adieu, the memory of that day 

 will not be effaced from my mind till the blessed time arrives 

 when I can go there again. And now, as I write, the memory 

 of those Roses is present in my mind ; the strains of the 

 string baud which discoursed such sweet music through the 

 Hall return ; the beauty of the cathedral, with its glorious 

 Norman arches, its magnificent rood screen, its sweet-voiced 

 choir singing praises to Him who sends and tends the flowers 

 (His gifts) which we love so well ; the genial kindness of 

 friends, the brotherhood, the freemasonry of rosarians, more 

 conspicuously shown surely in Hereford than elsewhere — all 

 this and much more causes the very name of Hereford to 

 sound sweet in my ears, and makes me love the Rose even 

 more than I did before. — John E. M. Camm. 



DISEASED POTATOES IN ORCHARD HOUSES. 

 I AM glad that our late disagreeable surprise — the finding 

 much of our Potato crop diseased — has attracted the attention 

 of such an experienced observer as Mr. Abbey, and I hasten to 

 say that these Potatoes (see page 40), were planted last October, 

 and fairly ripe by the 15th of April ; but as the houses are 

 unheated, and the season ten days late here, the fruit had not 

 set so much as to require syringing to any extent capable of 

 affecting the haulm. Of course shutting-up houses with large 

 borders of Potatoes, and syringing heavily overhead, would not 

 be the best way to ward-off disease just as the tubers were ripen- 

 ing, but it was not the case here. On searching still further I 

 think the manure used was too fresh, a fault which is very 

 cjmmou with hasty gardeners; but, after all, why should not 



