114 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The President remarked that Mr. Hovey's lecture had opened a 

 great variety of subjects for discussion, and proposed that we 

 should take up the matter of judicious and injudicious pruning. 



W. C. Strong, Chairman of the Committee on Discussion, sug- 

 gested that we should ponder the subjects presented by Mr. Hovey 

 at our leisure, and listen to some remarks by C. M. Atkinson on 

 roses. 



Mr. Atkinson said that his remarks would be on the best way 

 of arranging roses for exhibition, a subject in regard to which 

 much discussion has lately been going on in England. When Mr. 

 Sargent offered his special prizes for roses three years ago, he 

 required that they should be arranged in boxes on a carpet of 

 moss, instead of in the bottles previously used. Mr. Atkinson 

 regarded this method as a great improvement, not only as showing 

 the roses to better advantage, but because they could be brought 

 already arranged in the exhibition boxes, instead of being laid 

 into large boxes as is usually done. This has been found to be 

 the case in England, and it is even stronger in our dryer atmosphere. 

 He hoped to see this method generally introduced. 



Mr. Atkinson objected to offering a prize for the best display of 

 roses. William Paul, the great English rose grower, showed a 

 bank of two thousand roses, and the report described it as only a 

 wash-basket of flowers. Such displays afford no means of educa- 

 tion ; indeed, a rose show, except to the amateur, means little^ 

 He suggested that the boxes of roses should be arranged on each 

 side of a long table, with foliage plants in the centre as a back- 

 ground. In an exhibition in France, which he visited in 1852 or 

 53, the plants were not arranged until after they were judged, and 

 then they were arranged so as to produce the best effect as a whole. 

 No prizes are offered on our schedule for less than six roses. 

 Why not offer prizes for the best three, so as to give an opportunity 

 to cultivators on a small scale to gain a prize ? 



Charles M. Hovey thought it was a grand idea to judge of plants 

 before arranging them, and he asked why we should not appl}'^ the 

 same rule to roses. As to the arrangement of roses, we should 

 not like to see roses in boxes in our gardens, and why should we 

 in our exhibitions? Mr. Hovey pointed to a tall vase on the 

 table filled with graceful sprays of the Cherokee rose, and asked 

 whether it would be better to exhibit them so, or to place them in 

 boxes. Dr. Lindley, some few years before his death, visited an 



