CONFERENCE. 55 
CONFERENCE. 
TuEsDAY, JuLY 11, 1899, ar CHISWICK. . 
Introductory Address by Dr. Maxwetu T. Masters, F.R.S., Officer of 
the Order of Leopold, &c., &e. 
Our first duty, and a very pleasant one it is, is to welcome our foreign 
cuests, our friends from across the sea as I prefer to call them, to thank 
them for their presence here to-day, and to express a hope that their 
sojourn among us may be both agreeable and profitable. At the same 
time we regret that some such as Dr. Focke, the historian of hybridi- 
sation, has not been able to preside over this meeting, as we had hoped 
he might have done. Nor can we at such a meeting do other than express 
our abiding regret at the loss, though at an advanced age, of the great 
hybridiser, Charles Naudin. 
Our next duty is to thank the Council of the Royal Horticultural 
Society for this opportunity of meeting once more in these time-honoured 
gardens to discuss what, I venture to think, is one of the, if not the most 
important subject in modern progressive experimental horticulture. I 
use the words progressive and experimental because I believe that the 
future of horticulture depends very greatly on well-directed experiment. 
So far as the details of practical cultivation are concerned we are not 
so much in advance of our forefathers. We have infinitely greater 
advantages, and we have made use of them, but if they had had them 
they would have done the same. We are able to bring to bear on our . 
art not only the ‘‘ resources of civilisation ’’ to a degree impossible to our 
predecessors, but we can avail ourselves also of the teachings of science, 
and endeavour to apply them for the benefit of practical gardening. We 
are mere infants in this matter at present, and we can only dimly per- 
ceive the enormous strides that gardening will make when more fully 
guided and directed by scientific investigations. One object of this Con- 
ference is to show that cultural excellence by itself will not secure 
progress, and to forward this progress by discussing the subject of cross- 
breeding and hybridisation in all their degrees, alike in their practical 
and in their scientific aspects. 
To appreciate the importance of cross-breeding and hybridisation we 
we have only to look round our gardens and our exhibition-tents, or to 
scan the catalogues of our nurserymen. Selection has done and is doing 
much for the improvement of our plants, but it is cross-breeding which 
has furnished us with the materials for selection. 
A few years ago by the expression “new plants,’’ we meant plants 
newly introduced from other countries, but, with the possible exception 
of Orchids, the number of new plants of this description is now relatively 
few. 
The “new plants ’’ of the present day, like the Roses, the Chrysan- 
themums, the Fuchsias, and so many others, are the products of the 
gardener’s skill. From Peaches to Potatos, from Peas to Plums, from 
