AT SOUTH KENSINGTON, JUNE 5, 1861. 601 



pro^^ement; and it is not too much to assert that its labours 

 have raised English gardeners to the highest rank. 



Founded in the year 1804, and incorporated in 1809, by 

 command of His Majesty George the Tliird, the Society, after 

 languishing for some years, sprang into active existence as soon 

 as the termination of the long war once more left men leisure 

 to cultivate the arts of peace. At that time Horticulture had 

 ceased for many years in every part of Europe to make sensible 

 progress. All that remained was an unintelligent routine. Up 

 to the year 1816 the number of Fellows who joined the Society 

 annually rarely exceeded 20. From that period, however, the 

 elections rapidly increased ; so that in 1821 they amounted to 

 328. In 1822 the garden at Chiswick had been formed, and 

 the power of the Society to do good began to be felt even in 

 the remote possessions of the Crown. Collectors of seeds and 

 plants for the Horticultural Society were heard of in the United 

 States and Canada, in India, on the banks of the Zambezee, 

 and in the distant regions of the Hudson's Bay Company. The 

 result of these operations was the introduction into England of 

 by far the larger part of the highly-prized occupants of modern 

 gardens. , 



In 1827 was held the first of those Fetes, or more properly, 

 exhibitions of Horticultural produce, which for so many 



success ; there now, indeed, i 

 the small iron tent, under which a few cultivators ventured 

 in those days to display their scanty stores. But liberal 

 rewards produced competition ; gardeners soon saw that to be 

 the gainer of a prize at Chiswick was to stand at the head of 

 their class ; knowledge was sought for, and improved methods ot 

 cultivation were gradually discovered. . 



The changing habits of society, the competition of other similar 

 exhibitions in London itself, the power of locomotion to more 

 distant places of recreation by railway, combined with the, at all 

 times, uncertain nature of our climate, bad iu late years materially 

 diminished that attendance of visitors upon which the income 

 of the Society, and consequently its power of encouraging Hor- 

 ticulture, depended. It was under these circumstances that an 

 opportunity of forming a Garden in the immediate vicinity ot the 

 Metropolis was sought. „,.,•• r ion 



Her Majesty's Commissioners for the Exhibition of 18vl. 



