206 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
will not see the bloom, or the fruit, or the pecuniary recompense. It is, 
then, all important that the gardener, both the amateur and the profes- 
sional—but the professional especially—should have every assistance ; 
assistance, | may say, internal and external, equipment all round, and 
in the best way for the furtherance of his work. To begin with, we very 
much want something in the form of an easily intelligible handbook, which 
shall summarise the work already done in hybrids, so that every man shall 
not have to go over the same ground again. I have found there is an 
immense amount of waste of labour. In my own small work I have 
found that a great part of my time is wasted ; for if one only knew the results 
of what others had done, or if we could only know what statements one 
reads are true and what are false, we should save a very great deal of time. 
IT remember when I started with Narcissi I got hold of a book that told 
me to tie up the trumpets of my flowers to prevent insects crawling into 
them. I remember doing this—tying up the mouths of the trumpets. 
I never got any seed at all that year. No doubt that is a thing which 
should be known. The flower is a very complicated thing, and all its 
parts have meanings; and if you tie it up or cut off your corolla, you 
probably lose your seed. It would be a great help if these sort of things 
were generally known. In reading Darwin’s work on cross-fertilisation, 
I was very much struck with one phenomenon. In one of his experi- 
ments with Dianthus he found the strain lost vigour and reproductive 
power. He crossed it then with a plant from his own garden, and the 
strain began to recover tone and strength. Then he went further, and 
crossed this variety with a plant from a distance, and he found that the 
infusion of blood from a distance gave still greater freshness and vigour. 
He got more seeds and stronger plants. Fortunately for myself I acted 
upon that, and I could see quite distinctly the good of putting fresh 
bulbs from a distance into my ground and writing to my friends at a 
distance for pollen. If we had a little handbook where these notes could 
be published, it would bea great help to us. It is very difficult to glean 
here and there from the pages of newspapers the information one requires. 
Here is another practical suggestion. Supposing a man who lives on his 
nursery raises, we will say, a good Peach, and a year or two after, when he 
has a good stock of that Peach, there comes a pecuniary pinch, and he 
has to sell his stock. He sells his stock, makes £50 or £100 by it. How 
much is it needed that a man should have some sort of patent rights 
during his lifetime in the fruit of his brain and industry! It is very hard 
that a man should be able to write a book and draw an income from that 
book, but that if he produces a plant that enriches the garden, or orchard, 
or nation, the year after he has produced it it is all over the kingdom, and 
everybody has as much gain from it as he has. 
Mr. Georae Paun, V.M.H.: I should like very much to fortify what 
Mr. Engleheart has said. I do think it is a very hard thing that when 
we look round and see the work our English and foreign hybridists have 
done to feel that the work is so unremunerative. Perhaps in fruits it 
tells more, because these are articles of more commercial value. Take 
the Cox’s Orange Pippin, an Apple to be found in every fruit garden in the 
world. The man who originated the Cox’s Orange Pippin, I believe, did 
not make a penny out of it. I can speak with personal knowledge, having 
