August 17, 1876. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



147 



a-week. Tbis fact was pointed ont to me by some workmen 

 who wtre fixing some hot-water pipes, and they took the trouble 

 to actually measure the growth from week to week. It has 

 many of its leaves, I think, quite 12 inches long, and the sight 

 of tbcm bangiDg from the roof is very grand. If anything, it 

 seems to increase in vigour and strength. I have two other 

 plants of Marechal Niel planted cut in the same border in rich 

 soil, but they are pigmies in comparison. — H. W. Sobel- 

 Cauekon, Belvidere, Wesion-under Pemjard, Ross, Hereford. 



[The accompanying woodcut is an exact copy, and of the 

 exact size of the Rose leaf.] 



EABLT WRITERS ON ENGLISH GARDENING. 



No. 17. 

 WILLIAM FORSYTH. 

 He was born some time in 1737 at Old Meldrum in Aberdeen- 

 Bhire, and was there early initiated in the horticultural arts, 

 but completed his pupilage by being placed during 1763 under 

 Philip Miller at the Chelsea garden of the Apothecaries' Com- 

 pany. At Miller's recommendation he obtained the head gar- 

 denership to the Duke of Northumberland at Sion House — a 

 situation which he resigned in 1769 to succeed his old master 

 in the curatorship of the Chelsea garden. He retained this 

 appointment until 1784, and then resigned it upon succeeding 

 Mr. T. Robinson in the office of the Royal Gardener at Ken- 

 sington and St. James's. He held this appointment until his 

 death, publishing during the tenure of his office, " Observa- 

 tions on the Diseases, Defects, and Injuries in all kinds of 

 Fruit and Forest Trees, with an Account of a Particular Method 

 of Care Invented and Practised by the Author," 1791; and 

 " A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees," 

 1802. In 1804 he died ; and but for one circumstance, the 

 testimony of his friends that he was "benevolent, unaffected, 

 modest, and worthy," might have been inscribed without 

 comment beneath his portrait. We are told that from the 

 year 1768 down to 1789 he devoted much time to the cul- 

 tivation of fruit and foreBt trees, but especially towards the 

 discovery of some composition to remedy their incidental 

 diseases and injuries. He laid claim to success in his research 

 after this sanitative composition, for we have Been that he 

 published " an account of a method of cure invented and 

 practised " by himself, and Government gave him £1500 for 

 the discovery. They proposed to double the sum upon certain 

 facts being established by him ; hut in the meantime Mr. 

 Knight, then President of the Horticultural Society, Btepped 

 forth in the discharge of a distasteful publio duty — to dispute 

 Mr. Forsyth's title to any reward. We have had ocoasion to 

 examine minutely into the merits of the contest, and regret to 

 have arrived at the conclusion that the composition Mr. 

 Forsyth employed was borrowed from Hitt and other writers 

 upon the cultivation of trees, and that the cures he alleged to 

 have effected were not of the extent or importance certified. 

 Mr. Forsyth's plaister for healing the wounds and restoring to 

 vigour decayed trees was as follows : — One bushel of fresh cow 

 dung; half a bushel of lime rubbish, that from ceilings of 

 rooms is preferable, or powdered chalk ; half a bushel of wood 

 ashes, one-sixteenth of a buBhel of sand ; the three last to be 

 sifted fine. The whole to be mixed and beaten together until 

 they form a fine plaiater. Now, there is nothing in this com- 

 pound sufficiently differing from others recommended by hia 

 contemporaries and predecessors to entitle him to call it his 

 invention ; but supposing that an arbitrary difference in the 

 proportions of the constituents suffices to sustain such claim, 

 still what can be said in defence of his assertion that that 

 composition has filled with young wood the hollow trunks of 

 timber trees, and that he had in his possession parts of the 

 trunk of a tree in which the new wood by the efficacious power 

 of his " poor tree's plaister " had been made to incorporate 

 with the old, and that trees so cured were rendered as fit for 

 the navy as though they had never been injured ? Every gar- 

 dener, every physiologist, knows that this could not be true. 

 New wood and new bark may be induced to grow over old 

 wood, but no power, no application, will induce them to unite 

 to it. It is quite true that Dr. Lettsom, Dr. Anderson, and 

 others, who ought to have been more circumspect, certified 

 that Mr. Forsyth's statements contained " nothing more than 

 the truth ;" but they afterwards either acknowledged that they 

 did eo on evidence that ought not to have been deemed suffi- 

 cient, or that they meant no more than to testify in favour of 

 " the utility " of Mr. Forsyth's plaister. Of this there can 

 be no doubt, because every application excluding the rain and 



air from a tree's wound is of great " utility." It is also quite 

 true that Mr. Forsyth received a parliamentary grant of money, 

 but it was granted upon inconclusive evidence, and, as Mr. 

 Knight observes, affords a much better proof that he was paid 

 for an important discovery than that he made one. The whole 

 of the correspondence on the Bubject between Mr. Knight and 

 Dr. Lettsom can be referred to in the seventy-fourth and 

 seventy-fifth volumes of "The Gentleman's Magazine," and 

 may be read as a warning how literary controversy should not 

 be conduoted. Dr. Lettsom had rashly attested to the truth 

 of that of which he was not a competent judge, and had not 

 the noble candour to seek a fair examination ; whilst Mr. 

 Knight poured forth insinuations and charges in a wrathful 

 tone, very unbefitting either a philosopher or a gentleman. 



There is much relative to this plaieter in the " Forsyth Cor- 

 respondence " published by us in the Cottage Gardener in 1851. 

 In the November of 1799 Mr. ForByth's wife died, and in the 

 "Correspondence" there are testimonies of her excellence. I 

 do not know the number of their children, but two sons are 

 mentioned in the letter?. 



Besides the works named above Mr. Forsyth published " A 

 Botanical Nomenolator" in 1794, and on "Gathering and 

 Preserving Apples and Peare." He also contributed to the 

 Transactions of the Board of Agriculture on various modes of 

 promoting gardening among all olasses. 



Mr. Wedgewood, writing to Mr. Forsyth in 1801, first pro- 

 posed the establishment of a sooietv which ultimately became 

 our Royal Horticultural Society. The genus Forsythia was 

 named in his honour by M. Vahl. 



THE ARRANGEMENT OP PLANTS AND CUT 

 FLOWERS FOR INDOOR DECORATION. 

 In disposing of an assortment of plants in bloom to produce 

 a general harmony of colouring in a mixed group, or even in 

 making a nosegay, the same colours should recur at least twice 

 if not thrice. One of the masses of colour ought to be larger 

 than any of the others of the same kind, and the other one or 

 two masses or specks ought to be of different sizes, and not 

 so far distant from the first or principal mass as not to be 

 easily recognised by the eye. This necessity of two or more 

 portions of colour of a principal mass, and of secondary 



