THE SIX OF SPADES. 187 



a conscience. I mean the borrowing and the showing 

 of other people's plants. You are probably aware 

 that the Council of the Manchester Botanical Society 

 and the committees of several other horticultural 

 meetings have been quite unable to see the beauty of 

 this new form of petty larceny, and have gone at it 

 rather free. Acting together, they certainly ought to 

 be able to do that which one of our greatest exhibitors 

 once did for himself namely, to expose and to punish 

 suspected roguery. He was informed that a certain 

 grower of plants had promised to lend the best of 

 them to his principal opponent at a forthcoming 

 show ; and a short time before the exhibition he paid 

 a visit to the object of suspicion. On the day of the 

 show the plants appeared, as he was told they would, 

 in the collection of his adversary ; but he won, never- 

 theless, the first prize. Eogues is often fools, and 

 this one, after a few goes of gin, began a-comparing 

 and complaining before the public. On this my 

 friend, as I'm proud to^ call him, quietly fetches the 

 chairman and several members of the committee, and 

 when this floral felon was catching his wind for another 

 innings, he says very distinct, so that every one in 

 the tent could hear him nicely, " I demand that this 

 exhibitor may be disqualified for showing plants which 

 are not his own. I saw them three weeks ago in 



Mr. 's collection, and suspecting conspiracy, I 



put a small piece of tobacco-pipe close to the tallies 

 of that Ixora, that Bougainvillea, that AHamanda, 

 and that Erica. Let the secretary examine the pots." 

 He did so, and produced the pipes. The culprit, 

 admitting his guilt in the usual way that is, by 



