8o A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



from egotism, but as facts for the encouragement of others), 

 won the two first prizes at Birmingham, and two seconds 

 at the Crystal Palace, with very little assistance from their 

 allies over the water ; and in 1868, from "maiden" stocks 

 — i.e., from Briers budded in 1867 — I won fourteen first 

 prizes out of sixteen collections shown, including that which 

 I consider the champion prize of all, the first awarded to 

 amateurs at the Grand National Show of the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society. 



In this case, as with the heavy clay, the remedy lay close 

 to the disease ; and in very many similar cases it will be 

 found that, by intermixing the stronger and more tenacious 

 subsoil with the surface, fertility may be secured. If not in 

 actual proximity, the element required for a defective soil 

 — clay, for example, when sand predominates — may be 

 procured generally at no great distance, and may "be 

 fetched in a waggon or a wheelbarrow,* in accordance with 

 ways and means. Let Horticulture in this matter learn a 

 lesson from her younger sister ; and let the gardener who 



* In this present summer (1870) a gardener remarked to a friend of mine, 

 who had won a first prize for Roses at Newark, " I believe, sir, that you have 

 got the only garden in all Lincolnshire which could grow such blooms." 

 " And I brought it there," my friend responded, " in a wheelbarrow.''^ 



