466 'Transactions of the Horticultural Society. 



" The contributions to the ornamental department received 

 from various public gardens, as well as from private individuals, 

 fellows and correspondents of the Society, both at home and 

 abroad, have also been of considerable importance. Under 

 this head the collection of Chilian plants discovered and in- 

 troduced by Alexander Cruickshanks, Esq., and the Mexican 

 plants raised from the seeds collected by J. G. Graham, Esq., 

 in the mountains of Mexico, deserve to be particularly men- 

 tioned, as having furnished many new and beautiful hardy or 

 half-hardy species. The hot-houses have been more espe- 

 cially enriched by the Indian collections transmitted by 

 Dr. Wallich from the botanical garden of Calcutta, and pre- 

 sented to the Society by the Honourable East India Com- 

 pany, and also by a considerable number of very interesting 

 plants, collected in the neighbourhood of Rio Janeiro, and 

 presented by the late Sir Henry Chamberlayne. To Dr. Wal- 

 lich the Society is also indebted for a variety of trees and 

 shrubs from the mountains of Nepal, which have proved suf- 

 ficiently hardy to be placed in the arboretum. 



" In the fruit department, while the collections have been 

 constantly augmented by communications with foreign gardens, 

 the officers of the Society, by the direction of the Council, have 

 been diligently applying themselves to the examination of the 

 varieties, with a view of determining their respective merits or 

 demerits. If no result has hitherto been made public, this 

 has arisen from the extreme difficulty of the subject, from the 

 repeated trials that are required, year after year, before a final 

 opinion can be formed upon any given variety, and from an 

 unwillingness on the part of the Council to authorise the 

 publication of imperfect statements. Many thousand varieties 

 have now been subjected to the most rigid scrutiny ; and if 

 there is still a great mass of matter requiring investigation 

 among apples and pears, yet, with respect to other fruits, the 

 state of information acquired at the garden is such, that reports 

 upon a great number of them may be now immediately ex- 

 pected. An account of the varieties of the pine-apple has 

 already been read before the Society, and will be followed by 

 a constant succession of other reports, which will be printed 

 in the Transactions^ and which, it is confidently anticipated, 

 will contain much important information. The details in- 

 tended to be comprised in these reports will be best miderstood 

 from the perusal of them when printed ; but, in the mean 

 while, it may be stated that the great objects that have been 

 kept in view are, the simplification of the nomenclature, by the 

 reduction of the synonymes to order ; the investigation of 

 the modes of cultivation best adapted to each variety, the 



