August 3, 1876. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



91 



All these are good, particularly the first of the three. I am 

 aware that I am incurring frightful responsibility in publicly 

 recommending a new Rose, but I do not hesitate to do so, for 

 I feel confident that the D ake of Connaught is a grand Rose. 

 It cannot be better described than by saying that it is a Lord 

 . Macaulay with a good constitution. 



Dr. Hooker is a rather light but a very double Duke of 

 Edinburgh, with the additional advantage that it is a good 

 autumnal bloomer. 



The Sultan of Zanzibar was a little past its best, but Mr. 

 Paul has shown it remarkably fine this season. It is like the 

 original, a dark well-formed Rose after Prince Camille de 

 Rohan, and I believe it to be a gem of the first water. 



Empress of India and John Bright — please notice the de- 

 lightful alliance — are two seedlings sent out through Messrs. 

 Paul & Son by Mr. Laxton. The former is perhaps a little 

 too like Reynolds Hole. The latter is a rich vermilion in colour, 

 but too thin in form and weak in constitution ever to become 

 a grand show Rose. 



And now I have gone through Mr. Paul's novelties, but 

 before I conclude I must notice the new French Rose Comtesse 

 de Serenyi. This is a splendid light Rose, and one which 

 will take a high position when better known. 



Mr. Paul showed me a new Tea Rose garden he has recently 

 constructed. I am afraid I cannot well give a description of 

 it without sending a drawing, and this I am unable to do. I 

 may say the Bame here as I did in the school at Oxford. I was 

 requested to draw a map of Sicily, so I took out a half-crown 

 from my pocket, made a circle, stuck Pergamos in the middle, 

 and took it up. " "What ! " said the examiner, " this a map of 

 Sicily ?" " Please, sir, I was never taught drawing when I 

 was a boy." This so tickled the good men that they were 

 unable to continue for some little time, and I got through. 

 But the Tea-Rose-garden system is one which I think will be 

 most successful. It consists of cordons nailed against upright 

 postB up which the climbers are to grow, the whole being 

 covered in by hurdles or mats ; the beds underneath being 

 planted with dwarf Teas on the seedling Briar. The idea is to 

 protect in winter and retard in spring and early summer. The 

 result is yet to be seen. 



I was most hospitably entertained, and had a little difficulty 

 in getting away — in fact I had to run for a quarter of a mile 

 or so in order to catch the train, but I did catch it, and had 

 plenty of opportunity of cooling, for the Great Easternmost 

 kindly kept the train waiting twenty minutes outside the 

 Liverpool Street station and I did not get home till midnight ; 

 but I had a most pleasant visit, and would recommend all 

 rosarians who want to see growth and blooms to visit Ches- 

 hunt in the Rose season. — John B. M. Camji. 



ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



August 1st. 



A meeting of the debenture-holders of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society was held at noon last Tuesday, in the Council Room of 

 the Society, South Kensington, " to receive a statement from 

 the President (Lord Aberdare), as to the financial position of the 

 Society." At the Council-table were Lord Aberdare (in the 

 chair), Lord Alfred Churchill, Mr. Henry Webb (Treasurer), Dr. 

 Hogg (Secretary), Mr. Kellock, Dr. Denny, Mr. Haughton, and 

 Major Mason. Amongst the debenture-holders were General 

 Mackinnon, Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, Capt. Derriman, 

 Admiral Boyle, Dr. A. Fyfe, Mr. Edgar Bowring, C.B., Lieut.- 

 Col. D. Labalmondiere, Mr. J. J- Loundes, Mr. W. H. Solly, Mr. 

 George Reay, Dr. Martyn, Mr. A. E. Adamson, Mr. David Bobin- 

 son, &c. There were some ladies present. 



The President rose and Baid — Ladies and Gentlemen, we are 

 met together to-day in accordance with a notice which no doubt 

 you have received from the Royal Horticultural Society, and the 

 object of our meeting is to give you, the debenture-holders of 

 the Society, the first possible opportunity of considering what 

 your position is with respect to the Society, what it is you 

 possess in point of security for the repayment of your interest 

 and ultimately of the principal of your debentures. We have 

 called you together at this moment, and we really wish it were 

 in our power to have called you together at an earlier date, but 

 the fact is we have been so deeply and constantly engaged con- 

 sidering the position and affairs of the Society, that it is only at 

 this very last moment we are able to place before you anything 

 like a definite statement of your position. This is the more 

 due to the debenture-holders, who, after all, are the people who 

 are chiefly pecuniarily interested in the prosperity of the So- 

 ciety, because I find that even amongst the holders of these de- 

 bentures of the Royal Horticultural Society there exists a very 

 vague and extremely inaccurate idea as to what was the security 



given for their money when they became possessed of these de- 

 bentures. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I will state to you as briefly 

 and as concisely as I can what, in the belief and opinion of the 

 Council the exact nature of the security of the debenture-holders 

 is — first as to interest, and then as to the capital itself [hear] . 

 By two agreements entered into — one in July, 1860, the other in 

 March, 1861, between the Exhibition Commissioners of 1851 and 

 the Royal Horticultural Society, power was taken to raise .£50,000 

 upon debentures of the Society. The Roy al Horticultural Society 

 was to raise the money in this manner — In the first place, all 

 the receipts of the Royal Horticultural Society were to be ap- 

 plied to the maintenance of the gardens — that is to say, their 

 maintenance in a fit and proper condition, and to the promotion 

 ef their shows : in fact, to the performance and execution of 

 their business as a horticultural society ; and then it was pro- 

 vided that if there should be any surplus from the reoeipts, that 

 surplus should be applicable, in the first place to the payment 

 of the debenture-holders' interest, in thenext place to the payment 

 of rent to the Exhibition Commissioners of 1851, and especially 

 that if any surplus remained after providing for the items I have 

 mentioned, three-fifths of the same should be applied towards 

 paying off the actual capital of the debenture-holders. Now, with 

 respect to the debenture-holders' interest, interest has been paid 

 till very recently by the Society, but I regret to have to state 

 that at least £5000 of the interest has been improperly paid to the 

 debenture-holders. Here I may be permitted to say that the 

 Council and the Society are most anxious that the debenture- 

 holders should not in the least degree suffer, especially from 

 the payment to them of a sum of money not properly applicable 

 to the discharge of the interest on their debentures. Let the 

 debenture-holders bear in mind that the duty ot the Boyal Hor- 

 ticultural Society was, first of all, to provide for all their ordi- 

 nary payments, for all their expenses and debts incurred for the 

 keeping and maintenance of the gardens. That simply was the 

 first and paramount duty of the Society. When I joined the 

 Society I found that a debt of something like £5000 had been in- 

 curred by the Society, practically incurred by the payment to the 

 debenture-holders of money, of sums of money which were only 

 applicable to the payment of the expenses of the Society, and it 

 was only by an arrangement entered into with the Royal Commis- 

 sioners that we were enabled to raiBe upon their security the sum 

 of £5000, which has been applied to the discharge of the debts so 

 incurred by the Society, which debts Bhould have been cleared 

 off by the amount paid to the debenture-holders. With respect 

 to the security for the capital of the debenture-holders, it con- 

 sists of two sorts : First, as I have already mentioned, in the 

 event of there being a surplus after providing for all the proper 

 expenses of the Society, for the payment of the debenture in- 

 terest, and payment of rent to th6 Royal Commissioners — if, 

 after all these being provided for, there still existed a surplus, 

 three-fifths of it waB to be applied towards the diminution of 

 the debenture debt. I can only find in one year any such sum 

 as would do all that, and that was the first year of the Society's 

 operations — in 1863 — and in that year the sum of £300 was 

 found to be applicable to this purpose, and accordingly £300 of 

 the debenture debt was extinguished. Since that time I am 

 sorry to say the Society has had no surplus, and in fact the 

 receipts of the Society in most of the years since that time have 

 been insufficient to pay the rent to the Royal Commissioners. 

 It is clear, therefore, that that security has failed in respect of 

 the debenture-holders. But then there is another contingent 

 security, which is this : By the agreement of 1860 the Commis- 

 sioners leased these gardens for thirty-one years to the Society 

 at a rental of £2145 on certain conditions. If, at the end of 

 these thirty-one years — in the year 1892 — the Society fulfilled 

 all the conditions to which it subscribed, and amongst these 

 conditions paid the rent agreed upon and due to the Royal Com- 

 missioners, it would then be in a position to ask for a renewal of 

 the lease, and if the Royal Commissioners declined to grant that 

 renewal they would be obliged to pay one-half the debenture- 

 holders' debt. But I am sorry we have not been able to pay the 

 rent to the Royal Commissioners, and I am more sorry to say 

 there is very little hope of our being able to do so. Ton are all, 

 no doubt, aware that the Boyal Commissioners granted us what 

 may be called three years of grace, binding us to raise the sam 

 of £7000 applicable to the payment of our debts and relieving us 

 from the payment of rent for the gardens for three years on the 

 condition that during the three years we should exert ourselves 

 to raise the subscriptions of the Society to the amount of £10,000 

 annually. Well, we have made the very best exertions we could 

 make, we have honestly done all we could do ; but I am sorry 

 to say the result — partly, perhaps from the nature of the case, 

 and partly from the fact of three years' bad business — did not 

 bring us in the amount of subscriptions which would enable us 

 to carry on the gardens, having raised the subscriptions to the 

 sum of £10,000 a-year, the amount the Royal Commissioners 

 stipulated for. Taking everything into account, the actual 

 amount of our subscriptions can only be looked at as £4500 ; and 

 then on the other side, including rates and taxes and the pay- 

 , ment of the debenture-holders' interest, our expenditure comes 



