20 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



Viola growers to send their best there, to see how they 

 would thrive in a southern climate. After being in the 

 ground for some time, I received a letter from a member of 

 the Floral Committee inquiring how they had been raised, 

 as they were entirely different in growth from all the others 

 sent in. In reply I told exactly what I have already stated, 

 and heard no more of the matter till the autumn of 1875* 

 I was rather surprised when informed that I had got six 

 first-class certificates and was first in the competition, 

 Messrs. Dickson & Co. of Edinburgh being second. 

 Nothing more was done at this time, beyond growing the 

 plants I had already raised, and sowing the seed from them 

 in a bed broadcast. They were all more or less rayed. 

 A floral ally, seeing one of these certificated plants, a fine 

 white Self, remarked : i If you could only get that flower 

 without rays in the centre, I think it would be a great im- 

 provement/ Keeping a sharp look-out on the seed-beds, it 

 was ten years before I succeeded in finding a really rayless 

 Viola. In the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, while 

 walking round the seed-bed, I saw what I had been seeking 

 for, in a pure-white, rayless Self. The plant was there and 

 then pulled to pieces, and every bit propagated. It was 

 a warm, summer night, and the perfume from the blooms 

 at once attracted my attention. The next season I had a 

 little plantation of the rayless Self and a wealth of blooms. 

 A box of them was sent to Mr. Robinson, the editor of 



