June 21, 1877 ) 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



463 



lalanda. Another of the Ferns found there is called the Pain 

 Fern ; its stem is clothed with a soft inzz which is much used 

 for staffing mattreaaes. All the wealth of vegetation — all the 

 superb plumage of the birds of these southern islands, cannot 

 be compared with the charms of an Eogliah home. 



We have recently seen a monument erected to the 



memory of a gardener who died in very indigent oircumBtances. 

 It reminded us of the following relative to the author of 

 " Hudibras:" — 



" When Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive. 

 No generous patron would a dinner give. 

 See him, now lifeless and reduced to dust, 

 Presented with a monumental bust. 

 The poet's fate is here in emblem shown — 

 He asbed for bread, and he received a stone." 



KOSES. 



The Rose season ia opening very favourably in this neigh- 

 bourhood (Alverstoke, Hants). After a dripping and mild 

 early spring, succeeded by a cold and boisterous later spring, 

 we have had a fortnight or three weeks of genial weather, and 

 the Rosea are very fairlj' responding to it. I to-day counted 

 on the front of my house 105 fall blown Roses, besides a pro- 

 fusion of buds, consisting of Dnvoniensis, Gloire de Dijon, 

 John Hopper, Ch-vrles Lefebvre, Duke of Wellington, and, what 

 is especially gratifying, th?y are entirely clean. Thanks to 

 the treatment recommended by Mr. Rivers — of syringing with 

 qu.iseia decoction and soft soap, an infallible destructive of 

 aphis in any form or species — the other Eoses in the Rose 

 quarter are equally promising for a good show. Dwarfs ou the 

 ilanetti are especially good. — A Constant Scbscribek. 



ME. BENJAMIN SIMONITE. 



All florists, and others besides florists, will be glad to see 

 a Ufe-liko portrait of a worthy man engaged eo laudably and 

 succeeding so well in improving some of the most beautiful 

 flowers of earth— florists' flowers. Than gardeners, and those 

 engaged in gardening, none appreciate more fully the efforts 

 of those who make difficulties vanish by ardent love for an 

 object and steady perseverance in attaining a goal. Many 

 gardeners, in a hundred ways, fight uphill battles and win, 

 and all such will welcome a glance at one who has won against 

 Buch great odds so many honours. We did not intrude on 

 his modesty by asking of him to tell us of himself, and glad 

 are we, for we should have thereby been deprived of the follow- 

 ing biographical notes so fresh, full, and entertaining.] 



Bemamix Simonite was born June 2o, ls34, at his present 

 residence. Rough Bank, Sheffield, while yet the fiery black 

 town had not yet spoiled the beautiful valley in which it lies. 



Ita river, the Sheaf, used to flow in fresh from a oouree 

 through corn field and meadow ; country summer perfumes of 

 hay and Bean fields in blossom would steal at evening into its 

 outlying streets. Heights on the valley sides like Rough Bank 

 were breezy country walks, sprinkled with wild flowers and 

 gay with golden Broom and other shrubs. Many a garden 

 plot brightened the outskirts of the town. It was almost 

 wreathed in flowers, and there were probably more Auriculas 

 and other florist flowers grown forty years ago around Sheffield 

 than any other of our towns. 



But now, like a monstrous illustration of maggot in a flower 

 bud, Sheffield as it grow has eaten out the natural beauties of 

 the shelter that has nurtured it, and turned everything to its 

 own purposes and use. The last man one would expect to find 

 there now in the thick of the grimy noxious air is a florist 

 with his flowers. Even then we should expect to find him 

 but a miserable lingerer, clinging to a spot not fit for him, like 

 a furnace-blasted tree that is dying out top first by inches — a 

 man disappointed of his hope, struggling but sinking all the 

 while, with every conceivable and some inconceivable odds 

 against him, but instead we find the wonderful reverse in see- 

 ing one brilliantly Buccesafnl where dismal failure would be no 

 shame. 



Benjamin Simonite, and here let me add his father too, are 

 veritable heroes in floriculture. To hia father, a severe and 

 true and careful florist, he owes his cirly right training and 

 guidance in florist flowers; and the two istill work on at tho 

 old garden that has seen brighter and yet not better days. 

 They have bravely battled against the terrible destructive agents 

 around, and have had euch losses as would have carried down 

 most men's patience, and enthusiasm, and hope in tho sunlien 

 wreck. Even with all their ever-watchful and experienced 



care one feels anxious for the floral treasures stored in such an 

 unworthy, unsafe, dingy, ricketty old casket. 



There was nothing eventful in Benjamin Simonite's early 

 life except his intense fondness for a garden, and for this he 

 was always the one in the family taken wherever his father 

 went on floral excursions. What he calls " the little education 

 I got" wiis obtained before he was thirteen at the National 

 School, at which age he left to follow his father's trade; but 

 he did not make this the excuse for forgetting what he had 

 learnt or for not adding to it. He works at what is known as 

 a " two-handed trade" — (.<■., it takes two pairs of hands to 

 turn out hia work. It looks simple, for a skilled hand always 

 gives an illusion of deceptive ease, but it ia hard labour. I 

 have watched him at it many a time, and when we have shut 

 up shop — fancy my saying " we " for only looking on — and we 

 have gone down to the garden together, I have seen his strong 

 right hand shake strangely over a Carnation bloom ; and I 

 have known by the quiver of the pen in many a letter that he 

 had sat down to write fresh from the iron labour of the day. 

 The workshop is a little smithy next door to hia house, and 

 like a village blacksmith's in the music of the anvil, but with 

 an air of refinement and speciality about it in its more com- 

 plex tools and richer metals, for tho best steel and iron are 

 here in convenient rods and bars. 



As for the curious tools, you might imagine he had success- 

 fully raised a quantity of seedling tongs and hybrid hammers, 

 and had interesting sports, curious strains, and double varie- 

 ties. They are all named of course ; and Ben Simonite, like 

 the printer, has his " devil," a vicious little thing that will 

 not touch cold steel, but must have it sparkling hot. Hia 

 particular department of cutlery work is the beating of table 

 knives out of steel bars, which he has been accustomed to 

 work up for Rodgere and other eminent Sheflield firms. His 

 mate will heat the steel bar in a fierce little fire and join in a 

 few heavy blows on the anvil. The blade is then rounded, 

 flattened, and shaped for the grinder by Ben Simonite, and 

 the haft is afterwards welded on from an iron bar. In the 

 Rough Bank smithy I first learned that the kind of thumb 

 mark visible in the metal close to the handle of every knife is 

 the ineffacaable junction of the pure steel graft upon the 

 commoner and perhaps more vigorous iron stock. 



In 1860 occurred the event of his marriage, but he has been 

 a widower these fourteen years. Of hia three children two 

 curvive, and those of us who know him intimately recognise 

 the names that are dearest amongst those given to his favourite 

 florist flowers. 



He first grew Pinks and Pansiea, and then the Dahlia, and 

 took them to the shows. Qaito aware that to thoroughly 

 enjoy, and indeed to do jastice to a florist flower he ought to 

 be able to make the best of a good thing when he got it, he 

 carefully studied the principles and practice of the science of 

 dressing-in such flowers as have beauties which Nature indeed 

 would be content to never show, but which a florist cannot 

 bear to leave hidden or obscured. There are many styles of 

 dressing, just as there are daubs and masterpieces in painting. 

 There is the round, the flat, the stifJ, the free, the loose, tho 

 laboured ; there is a peculiarity in each man's style. In Ben 

 Simonite's not a trace of anything artificial — a calm repose and 

 a very sweet simplicity. It is high art. You may make a Car- 

 nation look as vain as a peacock or modest as a Violet. He 

 will bring out every point of beauty, and the flower be ravish- 

 iugly unconscious of it. 



At fourteen years old he took up the Tulip and sowed some 

 pods of seed with results akin to his well-known work with Car- 

 nations and Picotees. The Tulips, however, have suffered so 

 severely now for years from the horrors of the situation that 

 they only bloom to fall; indeed, they have frequently had to 

 go away for their health. Beds in the old garden have been 

 swept off, and the stock only kept up by otl'aets planted 

 elsewhere. 



He commenced cultivating the Carnation and Picotee in 

 IS In, and, unable to keep pace with growers whnae means were 

 ampler, he patiently began to work up to them by a surer and 

 nobler power than that of money, and one that soon overcame 

 it. This was by studying careful crossing, and his seedlings 

 have simply turned the flower over and over again, and tho 

 rioheet and best in every class are his. He has worked up to 

 such form and substance here that twenty-four petals make a 

 completely full and large flower; but then they are petals, and 

 the area of four dozen of the old sort is not equal to the acre- 

 age of two do/.en in a Sheffield seedling, nor able to make half 

 such a flower. In neighbouring shows for Pinks and Picotees 



