February 21, 1855. ] 



JOUKNAi OF HOETICULTUEE AXD COTTAGE GAKDENEE. 



151 



A3 regards Saturday, it is not that " I won"t go, but I 

 can't." The parishioners will say : — 

 *'By onr pastor perp'.ex'd 

 We cannot determine ; 

 'Watch and Dray,' says the test. 

 ' Go to sleep," t^uys the sermon ! *' 



My "best" man is the parish cleric, and he irill say 

 " Amen " in the wrong place ! 



I should not think the Exhibitors' Society have sent a 

 schedule " with their own value of the prizes aifixed." At 

 least I have not seen any such schedule. Probably it relates 

 to Saturday certificates. " F. E. H. S." asts, " What is the 

 end of this rigmarole ? " I wiU. tell him : If he cannot 

 persuade the Society to alter at least their grand show days 

 from Saturday to any other day than Monday the nursery- 

 men, gardeners, and amateurs will not send their com- 

 modities; and "the lai'ge proportion of Fellows," simply 

 lovers of pleasure, gay meetings, and crinoline exhibitions, 

 will have to make out their holiday with " croquet, quoits, 

 and Aunt Sally 1 " 



In conclusion, I am glad to see the names of Sir J. 

 Paxton, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Brandreth Gibbs, a good ad- 

 ministrator in agricultural matters, elected into che Council 

 of the Eoyal Horticultural Society. One pennyworth of 

 common sense is worth a pound of wit ! 



X am a remonstrant cliiefly, but not only, as regards the 

 National Eose Show, and I am sure that that Society would 

 never have been given up to the Eoyal Horticultural Society 

 had it been supposed possible that Saturday would have 

 ever been fixed for the exhibition of our national and much- 

 beloved flower. — W. F. Eadclyffe, Tamint Eushton, JBland- 

 ford. 



Sir. — It would be very easy to show that your corre- 

 spondent, "F. E. H. S ," is either a partisan and friend of 

 the CouncU, or knows nothing of the subject in dispute 

 between the Council and the exhibitors. I am told the 

 Council in their report have made a charge against the ex- 

 hibitors of dictation, which I and every member of the Ex- 

 hibitors' Society repudiate. When we get the report of the 

 Council we can reply formally from our Committee. Tour 

 coiTespondent writes as if the Council were trying something 

 new for the first time. Why, have they not had novelty 

 enough, and have they not been going from bad to worse 

 for the last three years? Nothing but novelty, and no 

 effect ! Now they have the astounding novelty of an Azalea 

 show on the 1 7th of June, a month after they have passed 

 their best blooming ! 



Can the Council expect the exhibitors to join them in all 

 such vagaries ? And can they wonder that we should send 

 in a remonstrance stating our inability to co-operate with 

 them, and refusing to exhibit unless some consideration is 

 shown for the convenience of those on whom the exhibi- 

 tions depend for success ? — A Member of the E; 

 Society. 



A HOWL. 



A HiijKLT distinguished, but in his latter days a somewhat 

 eccentric, nobleman that I knew once as one of my parish- 

 ioners, used to take great delight when on his daily drive 

 in getting out of his carriage, standing in the middle of the 

 road, and literally howling at the top of his voice. What he 

 did it for no one could tell. Whether to show that the voice 

 that once held entranced both Houses of the Legislature, 

 that made many a bewheedled jirry think "' the worse the 

 better reason," was still unsurpassed in volume, though the 

 mind that directed it was not what it once was ; or whether 

 he had some special grievance rankling in liis mind, and 

 that he thought it better to vent it this way than on any of 

 the inmates of his house ; or whether it was intended as a 

 protest againt all and everybody, was never known ; but it 

 was evidently a great relief to him, and he who went out 

 testy and cantankerous, snapping the head off any one who 

 spoke to him, was after this more amiable and tractable. 

 Of course his family gladly indulged the whim ; for, as the 

 big fellow whose little wife would beat him said, "" It pleases 

 her and doesn't hurt me in the least," they felt that what 

 was a relief to him was a boon to them. Well, I want to 

 have a howl. I have a grievance — it is not against any one ■ 



in particular, but I do know why I make it ; and although 

 I may not do anybody any good, I shall certainly, as some 

 people wickedly say of homceopathic medicines, not do them 

 any harm. It wiU be a relief to my mind to give it, and 

 who knows but some one may catch up the echo ':■ My howl 

 — (stand out of my way, good fol'ss who think all beauty is 

 concentrated in a Fern, an Orchid, or a fiue-foliaged plant) — 

 is about the neglect of florists' fiowers generally, and of the 

 Gladiolus in particular, in and about the metropolis. 



Let me be understood first of all in what I mean by florists' 

 flowers. I wOl take the term, not in its enlarged but re- 

 stricted sense. I am aware that under any definition of a 

 florists' flower you must include the Eose, the Dahlia, the 

 Pelargonium, and the Azalea ; but they are not neglected — 

 No : the flowers to which I specially allude under this title 

 are the Auricula, Pansy, Pink, Carnation and Picotee, Ea- 

 nunculus. Tulip, and Gladiolus ; and the position I wish to 

 advance is this, that there is not sufficient encouragement 

 from any quarter given to these flowers in London, and that 

 hence they will rapidly go out of cultivation ; for although 

 those who are really lovers of any particular flower will 

 grow it with no prospect whatever before them, of exhibiting 

 but simply for their love of it, yet I maintain that so great 

 is the influence of horticultural exhibitions, that just in pro- 

 portion as a flower is encouraged and shown will be the 

 increase of growers of it, and the estimation wherein it is 

 held. Had the Dahlia not been encouraged as an exhibition 

 flower would it ever have reached the high perfection to 

 which it has attained, and be valued, as it is everywhere, as 

 a fine autumnal flower ? What was it in times past that 

 made the Auricula, the Carnation, and the Tulip what they 

 became but those exhibitions at "The Horns," Kennington, 

 at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, and of the National Flori- 

 cultural Society ? And why is it that now one after another 

 is abandoning these ? Because people think far more of the 

 most trumpery novelty in "'bedding-out plants" and will 

 give encouragement to anything save those flowers of which 

 the cultivation is within the reach of any amateur who, with 

 I his little plot of ground, desires to grow his favourites. 

 I believe a great deal of this arises from laziness. No 

 florists' flower can be properly grown without a great deal 

 of trouble ; and a small garden m;iy be made very showy, 

 glaring, and hot-looking with Tom Thumbs, Verbenas, &e., 

 without eit'uer much skill or trouble. Look, as I have often 

 done, at the artizan with his frame of Auriculas, his stage 

 of Tulips, or bed of Pinks. See what care and skill he shows 

 in managing them, how all the year round they are in his 

 mind — his first thought when he goes out to his work in 

 the morning, his last before he goes into bis home at night, 

 and then tell me. What are you doing to encourage this 

 man now ? He was, many a time, a raiser of seedlings ; 

 he had of course (as who has not ?) exaggerated notions of 

 their excellence ; but when he did satisfy the critical eye of 

 a Turner or Keynes, and saw Smith's True Briton, or Jones's 

 Jolly Tar, or Eobinson's Fair EUen in the catalogues, was 

 he not a proud man ? And when he got his few pounds for 

 his child, and brought it home to the good dame instead of 

 drinking it out at the " Blue BnU," did she not forgive him 

 for taking the blanket off his bed that cold frosty night to 

 put it on his fi'ame (for I have known such things done) ? 

 Yes, I trow ; and may we not howl over the good old times, 

 which seem to be gone from us for ever in these days of 

 Scarlet Geraniums and polychrome beds ? 



But it may be asked. Do not the Eoyal Horiicultural and 

 Botanic Societies, and the Crystal Palace, encourage the 

 growth of these things ? They give prizes fcr them un- 

 doubtedly, but in very scant measure, and in some of them 

 far behind even the provincial shows ; and it is not two or 

 three prizes, for which amatem-s have, perhaps, to enter the 

 list with nurserymen, that will really encourage the growth 

 of these flowers. Let me take one of the newest and at the 

 same time easiest grown of florists' flowers — the Gladiolus, 

 and let me beg all whom it may concern to read the follow- 

 ing, occurring in an article on that flower in the "Florists' 

 Guide." The writer hails from "' sweet Daublin," and I 

 know him to be what he claims there to be, one of the most 

 successful growers of the flower, and one of the most enter- 

 prising pm-chasers as a necessary consequence. " And I may 

 here observe that we have good prtes to compete for : for 

 autumn, 1865, a silver cup value ten guineas, a second 



