4o8 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURISi. 



The great flower show of the Royal Hor- 

 ticultural Society in the Temple Gardens 

 was visited by us on the 25th of May, and 

 truly the display of roses, azaleas, rhoden- 

 drones, orchids, gloxinias, tuberous bego- 

 nias, caladiums, cannas, sarracenias, etc., 

 excelled anything we had ever before seen. 



We took notes of a great many wonder- 

 ful collections, but it would be unfair to 

 mention them here without giving a com- 

 plete list, and that belongs rather to a flor- 

 ist's trade journal than to our pages. Some 

 idea of the comprehensive nature of the ex- 

 hibits may however be imagined when we 

 note that John Waterer alone showed 42 

 varieties of rhodendrons, a display that 

 can be better imagined than described. He 

 pointed out to us one which he esteemed his 

 finest, namely, the Pink Pearl, which was 

 truly superb. 



An interesting display of potted frutt 

 trees in bearing was made by those cele- 

 brated horticulturists, Thos. Rivers & Sons, 

 of Sawbridge worth, Herts. Mr. Camp, 

 who was in charge, said the firm had now 

 four hundred acres in fruit and fruit trees. 

 We noticed among his novelties shown, the 

 Peregrine peach, similar in appearance to 

 the Alexander, but a free stone ; the Early 

 , Rivers cherry, a sweet black variety of 

 about tVje season of Tartarian, but a surer 

 cropper and larger ; the Frogmore, a Bigar- 

 reau, earlier than Napoleon, better in flavor, 

 and more tender, counted his best white ; 

 and two special varieties of plums, the 

 Early Rivers, his earliest, and the Monarch, 

 his latest, and these he counted the most 

 profitable for the orchard. 



The following note on the show, from 

 the Gardeners' Chronicle, will appropriate- 

 ly close this hasty sketch of what is known 

 in London as the Temple Flower Show : 



Delightful weather, a magni-ficent display 

 of flowers, and a very large attendance of 

 visitors, marked the first day. of the six- 

 teenth annual show of the Horticultural So- 



ciety opened yesterday in the Temple Gar- 

 dens. While, on the one hand, the Bench- 

 ers had liberally given up the whole of their 

 historic lawns for the occasion, the society, 

 on the other, had rearranged their tents, 

 and economised space in other ways, with 

 the result that, though the gardens were 

 thronged from morning to evening, the 

 crush experienced in previous years was dis- 

 tinctly lessened, if not altogether done away 

 with. Tents i, 2 and 3, for instance, in- 

 stead of existing separately, had been made 

 into one arcade, with an obvious economy 

 of room and improvement in ventilation, 

 though the alteration, not being accompa- 

 nied by a like rearrangement of numbers, 

 was somewhat of a snare to those who did 

 not use their catalogne with close attention. 

 Entering the first canvas hall from the 

 embankment, the visitor came upon a gor- 

 geous bank of tulips, tropical in their splen- 

 dor, and making the early English roses on 

 the left of the way look pallid by compari- 

 son. After the tulips were marshalled 

 Cape primroses, a comparatively new flow- 

 er, which growers hope may presently take 

 its place as a summer bedding plant, and 

 following these again Scotch pansies, and 

 begonias in fervid scarlets and yellows, out- 

 shining everything in their neighborhood. 

 On the other side of the tent the earliest 

 arrivals, who alone enjoyed much liberty of 

 niovement, found some relief from all this 

 floral brilliancy in practical, if unexpected 

 displays of such useful things as peas and 

 carrots, melons and cucumbers, all of which, 

 for some reason, were in show between 

 Messrs. Cannell's flaming cannas, cacti 

 flowering as grandly as though they were 

 in their native Mexican forests, and a hun- 

 dred other beautiful things from the rich 

 stores of the modern horticulturist. A no- 

 ticeable exhibit in tent 4 was that of the 

 heaths shown by Messrs. Balchin, of Hast- 

 ings, an unassuming stall, but commanding 

 its grorp of admirers all day. At one end 



