330 



THE GABDENEBS' CHRONICLE. 



[September 22, 1888. 



Advertisers are specially requested to note, that, 

 under no circumstances whatever, can any 

 particular position in the paper be guaran- 

 teed for advertisements occupying less space 

 than an entire column. 



GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OFFICE TELEGRAMS. 

 NOTICE to Correspondents, Advertisers, Sub- 

 scribers and others. The Registered Address 

 for Foreign and Inland Telegrams is 

 " GARDCSRON, LONDON." 



NOTICE to SUBSCRIBERS and OTHERS. 

 Post-office Orders and Postal Orders should 

 be made payable at the Post Office, 

 No. 42, DRURY LANE. 



APPOINTMENTS FOR THE ENSUING WEEK. 



MEETINGS. 



Tinrsniv o™~ „,. f Royal Horticultural Society : Fruit 



lUibDAr, SEPT. 25^ and noral Committee3 . 



SALES. 



f Dutch Bulbs, at Stevens' Rooms. 



Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & 

 MONDAY, Sept. 24 \ Morris' Rooms. 



Dutch Bulb3, at 123, Fenchurch 



\ Street, by Messrs. Smail & Co. 



^Greenhouse Plants, at The Hall, 



TUESDAY SrpT •>=,) Duh ™ h . °y Stevens. 



lUHSDAl, taEPT. 2o< 0rchids in Fl0TCerj at protheroe & 



(. Morris' Rooms. 

 ( Dutch Bulbs, at Stevens' Rooms. 

 WEDNESDAY, Sept. 26^ Dutch Bulbs, at 123, Fenchurch 

 ( Street, by Messrs. Smail & Co. 

 r Orchids, Lilies, &c, at Stevens' 

 I Rooms. 

 Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & Morris ' 



Rooms. 

 Greenhouse Plants, at the Bruns- 

 I wick Nursery, Tottenham, by 

 v Protheroe & Morris. 

 ^Imported Orchids, at Protheroe & 

 q™. 9S J Morris' Rooms. 

 SEPl. ^s-j Du tch Bulbs, at 123, Fenchurch 

 ( Street, by Messrs. Smail & Co. 

 ( Dutch Bulbs, at Stevens' Rooms. 

 Sept. 29-? Dutch Bulbs, at Protheroe & Morris' 

 ( Rooms. 



THURSDAY, Sept. 27 



The address delivered before the 

 HorHcJltart Biological Section of the British 



Association by the Director of the 

 Royal Gardens, Kew, will be read with interest 

 by many classes of readers. As was befitting a 

 botanist holding such a position, Mr. Dyer, 

 alluded in his address to many departments of 

 his subject. By so doing, he did much to en- 

 lighten the general public, who look upon botany 

 as an agreeable recreation, barring the hard names ! 

 Mr. Dyer, at any rate, takes a juster and more 

 comprehensive view of his subject, and dis- 

 played it before his audience as forming one 

 department of biology, and one which, while 

 in no degree inferior to its sister science, 

 zoology, forms the appropriate introduction 

 to its study. Mr. Dyer's address was compre- 

 hensive, but it was long — we do not say too long, 

 although its length forbids us from inserting 

 more than a moiety, and compels us to leave out 

 the portions relating to fermentation, not by any 

 means as the least important, but as the part 

 which, under existing circumstances, has the 

 least direct interest to our readers. 



Mr. Dyer did not wholly ignore horticulture, 

 nor, considering the wide scope of his address 

 and the limited time at his disposal, could he 

 have consistently devoted much more space than 

 he did to its claims as a part of biological science. 

 We hope, however, the opportunity will come 

 for the Director of Kew to stand forth, as he is 

 so well fitted to do, and enforce upon the 

 botanists and physiologists the supreme import- 

 ance of horticulture as a branch of biological 

 science. That the public should look on horti- 

 culture simply as a means of supplying their 

 requirements, aesthetic or material, is intelli- 



gible enough; that commercial men should 

 regard it as a means of making money is equally 

 legitimate. To their honour be it spoken, many 

 of them do not regard this as their only object. 

 Scientific botany would be very materially weak- 

 ened by the abstention of the importers, the 

 raisers, and the professional growers of plants, 

 whether new or old. 



The importers furnish the means to the botanist 

 of vastly increasing his knowledge of certain 

 groups. Our knowledge of Orchids, for instance, 

 without their aid, would not [now be so very 

 much greater than it was in the time of 

 Linnaeus. Whole districts would be even 

 now botanically unknown were it not for the 

 labours of the collectors sent out by our plant 

 merchants. 



The raisers of new plants, those who de- 

 velope existing materials into entirely new 

 combinations, by hybridisation, or by cross- 

 breeding, or even by selection only, contribute 

 still more remarkably to biological science. 

 They even create new types of structure. Look at 

 the tuberous Begonias, for instance — a quarter 

 of a century ago no such thing existed, now they 

 form a distinct type. It will be said that they do 

 not exist in Nature — perhaps not, but in any 

 case do they not afford an illustration of the way 

 in which new types may have originated, or 

 do originate, in Nature ? — do they not furnish a 

 very plausible explanation of the way in which 

 natural variations have been brought about ? 

 The Gentiana acaulis alluded to by M. Corre- 

 von in a preceding column affords another 

 illustration of a variety that is constant under 

 many variations of soil and circumstance, 

 which has been so for many years, but which 

 has no exact counterpart in Nature. Consider 

 also the "sports" with which the gardener 

 has so much to do ; the word is unfortunate, 

 it is true, but its meaning is sufficiently well 

 known. Do not these productions throw ma- 

 terial light upon the nature and range of variation 

 in plants P 



Look back to the interesting statement that 

 Mr. Noble placed on record in our columns a 

 week or two since as to the history and pecu- 

 liarities of the white variety of Jackman's 

 Clematis, and see whether that does not illus- 

 trate the cause of variation in a remarkable 

 degree. Look, too, at the persistent efforts of 

 the seedsmen and raisers to secure a new Pea, or 

 a Strawberry, or what not, that shall be earlier 

 or later, even but by a few days — which shall be 

 suited to this, that, and the other climate and 

 soil — and see how constant and continuous is the 

 progress of modification they effect. We may 

 smile sometimes at the eagerness with which 

 a plant that flowers a day or two earlier than 

 another is brought under notice and its qualities 

 extolled ; the change is sometimes almost imper- 

 ceptible, and the advantage as infinitessimal ; but 

 look back a generation, or even ten years, and 

 see then how much has been effected by the 

 slow but constant accumulation of progressive 

 modifications. If man can do so much in his 

 brief span, what may not be done in Nature ? 

 — what must not have been done in the countless 

 ages that have rolled over our globe ? 



And from an opposite point of view, how much 

 has been effected in the way of fixity by the 

 labours of the gardener ? We must not pursue 

 the subject here, but we may urge that if the 

 fixity of Egyptain plants, as illustrated in the 

 tombs and mummy-cases of the Nile Valley, be 

 adduced as an illustration of permanence of 

 character, dependent on the existence of like 

 conditions, surely, the labour of the gardener 

 who, in a degree at least, secures a corresponding 



amount of fixity under far more unfavourable 

 conditions, is worthy of recognition at the hands 

 of the representatives of science. The great 

 naturalist of our century — Darwin — did recog- 

 nise our work. His works, his arguments, are, 

 to a very large extent, based upon the obser- 

 vations of the gardeners as recorded in the hor- 

 ticultural Press. But the botanists, and especially 

 the rising school, seem disposed to ignore the vast 

 body of evidence collected for them by the gar- 

 dener, and which it is their business to collate and 

 render available. The British Association should 

 offer a means of checking this one-sided 

 specialism. 



And then take the grower : what chemist, 

 what physicist but would rejoice if he could 

 have the handling of so vast a mass of evi- 

 dence as those that present themselves to the 

 grower ? Of course, in the garden, still less in 

 the field, there cannot be the precision that there is 

 in the laboratory. It is impossible to eliminate 

 con 9icting elements; it is not within our power 

 to isolate plants as the chemist isolates the sub- 

 stance he wishes to investigate ; but nevertheless 

 the gardener can do and does much to lift the 

 plant out of the struggle for existence, and to 

 study it as it grows apart from hostile or 

 competing influences. 



The immense field for his studies compensates 

 in some degree for the inevitable want of pre- 

 cision. The plant grower, in fact, is every day 

 of his life performing or watching experiments 

 of the utmost importance as regards plant-life. 

 One great advantage of this lies in the fact that, 

 in prosecuting his business, he is engaged in no 

 mere barren brain-twisting, but he is contri- 

 buting materially to the solution of the 

 problems of life and to the welfare of his 

 fellows, while the keener his investigation, the 

 greater the profit to himself ; so that, both from 

 the higher point of view of the advancement of 

 science, and the more selfish standpoint of self- 

 interest, the plant grower is doing excellent 

 work. 



The inter-relations between vegetable physi- 

 ology and practical culture are indeed numerous 

 and weighty beyond computation ; and it is time, 

 and more than time, that the professors and 

 representatives of horticulture should assert 

 their claim for consideration, if not among the 

 pure sciences, at least among those applied 

 sciences which gave so distinguished a repre- 

 sentative this year to the British Association in 

 its President, Sir Frederick Bramwell. 



Kew "BULLETIN." — The last published number 

 (September) contains further details as to the 

 fruit supplies of various colonies. Dominica is the 

 nearest available fruit-producing island to the United 

 States and Canada, and also to Great Britain. The 

 geographical and climatal conditions of Dominica 

 are, says Dr. Nichols, admirably adapted to the 

 culture of tropical and sub-tropical fruit. The total 

 value of the fruit exported from Dominica between 

 the years 1881 and 1887, inclusive, was over £46,000. 

 Dr. Nichols gives a list of fruits cultivated in the 

 island in question, and other lists are given from 

 Montserrat, St. Christopher, Nevis ; the Virgin 

 Islands and Bermuda. A short notice is added on 

 the indiarubber trade in Upper Burmah. The ca- 

 outchouc, in this case, is furnished by Ficus elastica. 



"Bentham and Hooker."— M. Dukand has 



rendered a public service, by compiling a full list of 

 the genera of flowering plants with their synonyms, 

 as published in Bentham and Hooker's Genera 

 Plantamm, and by incoporatingthenames of the genera 

 since published up to the end of the year 1887, and 

 by making a few changes in order to satisfy the law of 

 priority. The genera are arranged under the natural 



