THE GLADIOLUS. 63 



now come to a point where he was willing to weed out ; twenty- 

 five varieties would satisfy him. He mentioned the following 

 twelve kinds as having been satisfactory in his garden : 



Africaine. Jupiter. 



Baroness Burdett-Coutts. La Perle. 



Celimene. La V^suve. 



De Lessep's. Mary Stuart. 



Eugene Scribe. Meyerbeer. 



Horace Vernet. Shakspeare. 



John B. Moore spoke of the importance, in crossing gladioli, of 

 strong robust kinds that do not grow high but will support them- 

 selves, so as to bring about a change in habit similar to that which 

 has been produced in phloxes. The finest growth of gladioli that 

 he ever saw was on Cape Cod ; he dug down to see what they had 

 to feed on, and found them heavily manured with decomposed 

 cow dung. He would depend on that, but if he used phosphate 

 would want more than a gill to twelve feet of a row. Otliers 

 might not start with so good land as the essayist, and the plants 

 must have food. He did not approve the essayist's plan of drop- 

 ping, though it might answer, but it is difficult to drop them six 

 inches apart, and it would not be much more work to throw them 

 in hap-hazard and then place them regularly. He had pursued 

 this method in planting seed onions, of which he had raised acres, 

 and found that if turned on one side they will grope round before 

 growing up. He likes to see straight rows, and the cultivator or 

 weeding hoe can be run much nearer to the plants. 



Mr. Endicott said that he had used even less than a gill of fer- 

 tilizer to twelve feet, and the plants did very well. In his method 

 of planting thej^ are in tolerably straight rows, though he did not 

 sa}' it is the best way. He thouglit it not fair to compare the glad- 

 iolus with the phlox, which makes a spreading head that you must 

 look down upon, while the gladiolus looks straight at you. 



Mr. Wilder here introduced to the meetiug the Hon. James 

 Grinnell, a member of the State Board of Agriculture, who was 

 deputed by the Board to attend the exhibitions of the Society 

 during the past year. Mr. Grinnell said that his own operations 

 had not been so much in the way of cultivating those things which 

 beautify life as those which are useful. It was a pleasure to him 



