June 4, 1874. ] 



JOUBNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



443 



Ophioglossum vulgatuu. — This common British species 

 if!/- 2), is too well known to need description here, and is 

 only named as it is found upon this island. 



Fig. 2. — OphiogloBaom vulgatnm. 



The above enumeration comprises all the Ferns I can find 

 to be natives of St. Helena. If any of the readers of our 

 ■Journal can give me further information on the subject I shall 

 be most grateful. — Expekto Ckede. 



METROPOLITAN FLOBAL SOCIETY. 

 I AM happy to be able to announce that arrangements have 

 been completed with the Directors of the Alexandra Park, by 

 which an autumn exhibition will be held there on August 2'2nd 

 and 24th, as indeed it would have been last year but for the 

 disastrous fire. Our schedule is a very liberal one — upwards 

 of £1G0, and while it is mainly the object of the Society to 

 ■encourage amateurs, ample scope is given for all exhibitors. 

 There will be no entrance fee, as has heretofore been the case, 

 but we look for an increase of subscriptions to enable us to 

 «arry out our plans. Our Society becomes more than ever 

 necessary ; for now the Koyal Horticultural Society does not 

 hold an exhibition at all in August, nor the Crystal Palace, 

 consequently growers of Hollyhocks and Gladioluses in the 

 southern counties would have no place to exhibit them 

 were it not for our exhibition ; while the prizes offered for 

 Dahlias at the Royal Horticultural Society give little en- 

 •couragement to the growers of that fine flower. We therefore, 

 in face of the rising tide of taste for florists' flowers, con- 

 fidently appeal to horticulturists to give us their aid, and hope 

 "to be borne rapidly on the "flood that leads to fortune." — 

 D., Deal. 



General Meetings or the Royal Hobticdltueal Society 

 were held on the 13th and 27th of May for the election of 

 Fellows, &c., when the following candidates were elected — 

 viz., Mrs. Bald, H. Benjamin, M. H. Benjamin, Oswald 

 BlozBoma, Mrs. Alexandre Cassavetti, Lady Doke, William 



James Ford, Mrs. George B. C. Laverson, Sampson S. Lloyd, 

 M.P., Henry D. Macaulay, William Humphrey Hansford, 

 Lewis K. Starkey, M.P., Edward L. Walker, Mrs. Walker, 

 Mrs. Forbes Wiuslow, Earl of Aberdeen, Thomas George 

 Barclay, Frederick Campion, George Dunlop, Lady Clayton 

 East, J. Caven Fox, Mrs. Grimwood, James Innes, Charles 

 T. Ritchie, M.P., Mrs. Jacob C. Rogers, &a. 



THE PEAR PARADISE STOCK. 



The name of the Pear Paradise will strike most people as 

 being something novel in fruit-culture. What has been wanted 

 so long is a stock of the same nature as the Pear, which would 

 effect the same results upon it as the Apple Paradise does 

 upon the Apple, and this has been to some extent obtained by 

 M. Miro, of Meaux, near Paris. He says in a communication 

 sent to a French contemporary : — 



" In a course of arboriculture which M. Baudinat and I gave 

 in the garden of M. Messager, member of the Horticultural 

 Society of Meaux, after speaking of the effects of various stocks 

 on different fruit trees, some of our audience remarked on the 

 ingenuity of making a Pear Paradise stock. I made uo pre- 

 tence of having found a Paradise, but a sort of intermediate, 

 which shall be the subject of this communication. The suckers 

 of the Pear stock grow less vigorously than the parent, and are 

 therefore in this respect between the Pear and the Quince. 

 They make excellent pyramids, and fruit quickly, and they 

 have the advantage over the Quince of prospering in all soDs 

 by reason of their rooting near the surface. 



" In 18G3 I bought two hundred plants of suckers which I 

 planted in my garden. I grafted almost all in July of the 

 same year. I made a plantation of them in very bad dry soil, 

 despairing of the success of this plantation. Since that time 

 till 1871 I had not seen these trees, when I was agreeably sur- 

 prised at their moderate vegetation , which was very green and 

 less strong than the trees on the Pear stock, and they were so 

 heavily laden with fruit as to require to be thinned. This 

 proved to me that stocks from suckers of the Pear are well 

 adapted to make garden trees, while trees on the Pear stock 

 are only fit for orchards." 



This is an experiment which anyone can try. Procure in 

 autumn, when the leaves have fallen, a number of suckers 

 from smaU-sized Pear trees in an orchard or garden. Choose 

 those that appear to be the most deUcate growers. Run them 

 out in Unes, and when estabhshed graft them with any kinds 

 of Pears which are desired, and no doubt the result will be 

 equahy satisfactory as M. Miro found his experiment to be. 



A FEW HINTS ON SUMMER BEDDING. 



By the time this appears in print, most gardeners will have 

 made up their minds as to the way in which the flower beds 

 and borders under their care will be planted this year with 

 their summer and autumn occupants. In all well-ordered 

 gardens this matter is decided a considerable time before- 

 hand, and the number of the different varieties of plants re- 

 quired to complete the arrangement ascertained, for the pur- 

 pose of getting them ready in good time, so that they may be 

 properly hardened and in good condition when planting-out 

 time comes round. This plan has much to recommend it, and 

 adhering to it will prevent mistakes in the distribution of the 

 plants, and cause the work to get on more expeditiously at the 

 time of planting. But although the plan of deciding before- 

 hand the position that each kind of plant shall occupy in 

 individual or groups of beds is the right way to proceed, it is 

 not in all instances carried out. And possibly there are some 

 readers of this Journal who up to the present time have not 

 fixed upon any particular style of arrangement as regards the 

 distribution of the various kinds of flowering plants in the beds 

 or borders for this year. If there are such, no time should be 

 lost in deciding upon a bedding-out plan; but before doing so, 

 the stock of bedding plants should be gone over and counted, 

 noting down the correct number and condition as regards health 

 of each variety. Having got a list of the different varieties of 

 plants on hand, and the correct number of each kind, with a 

 plan of the beds or borders to be filled, having the correct size 

 of each bed marked thereon — the work of arranging how the 

 plants are to be distributed in the beds can be done in a 

 shorter time, and with a certainty of more satisfactory results, 

 than if left untU the hurry of planting-time comes. 



I need not tell the majority of gardeners that the success of 

 bedding plants, after being planted out, depends very much on 



