44 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
stretched far wider than I have ever known it before. The interest of your 
experiments are so wide that even zoologists have been brought to this 
Conference, and even they by attending to the work of the hybridist may 
gain some new light. The first paper we listened to yesterday was by 
Mr. Bateson, whose views, I believe, were founded on discontinuity in 
nature. Discontinuity is here the basis of continuity, for this 
gathering of different nations and sciences must needs lead to a greater 
union. 
M. Henry pe Vinmorin :—My Lords, your Excellencies, Ladies, and 
Gentlemen,—I feel it a duty to thank the Royal Horticultural Society of 
Great Britain for the compliment paid to myself and my country in being 
invited to this meeting—most opportunely called together by the Royal 
Horticultural Society. Too much cannot be said about the importance 
and the value of horticulture as a part of the national wealth of any 
country. Horticulture has been said to be, and is certainly, the highest 
and most perfect form of agriculture. It is the science that brings out 
the highest results from the soil, and that constitutes most of the wealth 
of any and every nation. But horticulture, like every economical under- 
taking, is at the present time working under difficulties. New competition 
and new difficulties are creeping up every year; and now when this 
century is waning and another is coming we have to be considering 
harder than ever how best to improve the condition of horticulture in 
every country in this world. ‘The difficulties of horticulture, for example, 
are increasing in relation to the increased price of coals. We see in 
many parts of the world, and in this part in particular, that coals 
are used very largely for promoting the quick growth of plants, especially 
of fruit. But at the same time you see that the progress of navigation is 
so rapid that it is becoming an awkward problem in many cases whether 
it is more profitable to use coals to heat steamers to steam ten or 
fifteen miles an hour to bring fruit from distant countries, or to use the 
coal to bring forth earlier crops in our own countries at home. But if we 
could so alter the varieties of fruits that we could raise them by heat in a 
few weeks, then we should know what to do. Itis to our hybridists, 
then, that we must look to make our old varieties earlier and able to be 
brought to maturity in a short time. Our efforts must be made to bring 
this about. Plants are our tools. They are the organs by which we 
obtain all precious results in horticulture. By improving our tools we 
are doing what all sorts of industry are trying to obtain—an improvement 
of their finished productions. 
In proposing the third toast, that of ‘‘ Hybridists,’”’ Mr. W. Barrson, 
F.R.S., said :—Mr. Chairman, your Excellencies, my Lords, Ladies, and 
Gentlemen,—I hardly knew to what I owed the honour of being chosen to 
propose this toast of ‘‘ Hybridists’”’ to-night until I recollected that 
perhaps I was the only man in the room who could say he had never 
produced a single hybrid. For this toast is practically the toast of our- 
selves. ‘There must be very few here present who are not included in 
the term ‘‘ hybridists.”’ I think it is not difficult to anticipate that this 
toast will be drunk with alacrity. What is a hybridist ? If you turn up 
the dictionary you find it is connected with the Greek word tprc, which 
means ‘‘ lawless.” But in these two days that it has been my great 
