OPENING ADDRESS, BY) 
and workers who banded themselves together into a ‘‘ Society of 
Gardeners.”’ 
“He is mentioned,” says Johnson in his “History of English 
Gardening,” “ throughout Bradley’s works as a man of general informa- 
tion and fond of scientific research, and in them are given many of his 
experiments to demonstrate the sexuality of plants and their possession 
of a circulatory system. He was a commercial gardener at Hoxton, 
carrying on one of the largest trades as a nurseryman and florist that were 
then established. He was one of the largest English cultivators of a 
vineyard, of which he had one at Hoxton as late as 1722. He died in 
1729, leaving funds for insuring the delivery of a sermon annually in the 
Churel: of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, on Whit Tuesday, ‘ On the wonder- 
ful works of Godin the Creation ; or, On the certainty of the resurrection 
of the dead proved by the certain changes of the animal and vegetable 
parts of the Creation.’ ”’ 
Fairchild was thus not only the raiser of the first garden hybrid, but 
the originator of the flower services now popular in our churches. 
We do not hear much of intentionally raised hybrids from this time 
till that of Linneus, in 1759.* The great Swedish naturalist having 
observed in his garden a Tragopogon, apparently a hybrid between T. 
pratensis and T. parvifolius, set to work to ascertain by experiment 
whether this conjecture was correct. He placed pollen of T. parvifolius 
on to the stigmas of T. pratensis, obtained seed, and from this seed the 
hybrid was produced. 
About the same time (that is, in 1760) Kolreuter began his elaborate 
experiments ; but these were made with no practical aim, and thus for a 
time suffered unmerited oblivion. 
Some years after the President of this Society, Thomas Andrew 
Knight, and specially Dean Herbert, took up the work, with what 
splendid results you all know. 
It is curious, however, to note that objections and prejudices arose 
from two sources. Many worthy people objected to the production of 
hybrids on the ground that it was an impious interference with the laws 
of Nature. To such an extent was this prejudice carried that a former 
firm of nurserymen at Tooting, celebrated in their day for the culture, 
amongst other things, of Heaths, in order to avoid wounding sensitive 
susceptibilities, exhibited as new species introduced from the Cape of Good 
Hope forms which had really been originated by cross-breeding in their 
own nurseries. 
The best answer to this prejudice was supplied by Dean Herbert, whose 
orthodoxy was beyond suspicion. He, like Linnezeus before him, had 
observed the existence of naturai hybrids, and he set to work to prove 
experimentally the justness of his opinion. He succeeded in raising, as 
Engleheart has done since, many hybrid Narcissi, such as he had seen 
wild in the Pyrenees, by means of artificial cross-breeding. If such 
forms exist in nature, there can be no impropriety in producing them by 
the art of the gardener. 
In our own time, Reichenbach, judging from appearances only, 
described as natural hybrids numerous Orchids. Veitch and others have 
* Amen. Acad., ed. Gilibert, vol. i. p. 212. 
