March 18, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



I2 5 



plants and all kinds of hardy trees and shrubs. These are 

 mostly offered by samples sent to the auction rooms, the ven- 

 dors undertaking to forward the plants direct from their 



Fig. 24. — Bessera elegans. — See page 124, 



nurseries to the buyers. In this way nurserymen find a ready 

 means of disposing of surplus stocks, and although some of 

 the prices realized are not remunerative to the growers, it fre- 



quently happens that higher prices are obtained in the auction 

 rooms than would be asked in the nursery. 



Great quantities of Orchids have already been disposed of 



by auction this year notwithstand- 

 ing the unfavorable weather. 

 Lcelia grqndis was offered by the 

 thousand last week ; enormous 

 masses of Dendrobium Dalhon- 

 sieanum, D. Wardianum, Vanda 

 Sanderiana and other choice 

 tropical East Indian Orchids have 

 also recently found a ready mar- 

 ket in the auction rooms. This 

 week brings quantities of newly 

 imported plants of the pretty new 

 Odon toglossum No ezlianum, 

 which may be called an orange- 

 red Mesospinidium vulcanicum, 

 and is likely to prove a good 

 garden Orchid. There are also 

 other novelties and rarities which 

 will shortly find their way to the 

 auction rooms, but which I am 

 not in a position to name at 

 present. On the whole this 

 means of distributing plants has 

 its advantages both to vendor 

 and purchaser. At the same time 

 it offers an opening to dishonest 

 dealers who prey upon the ig- 

 norance of many who attend 

 these sales. We sometimes hear 

 of wonderful things being bought 

 at an auction sale for " a mere 

 song"; but we rarely hear of the 

 heart-breaking disappointment 

 of the purchaser who gets only 

 rubbish for his pains, and, some- 

 times, big prices. These things, 

 however, must be at auction 

 sales of all kinds. 



A Fatal Year. — A winter 

 which will certainly stand out 

 among the bad winters of this 

 century has been destructive not 

 only to many good plants, but 

 has killed off many good men 

 besides. This week we have 

 lost three of the leading lights 

 in the English horticultural world. 

 Mr. John Dominy, who served 

 Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons over 

 forty years, and who raised not 

 only the first, but many of the 

 finest, hybrid Orchids we possess, 

 died suddenly last week,, at the 

 age of 75. The genial, clever 

 manager of the Clapton Nurse- 

 ries, Mr. Frank Casey, fell dead 

 at a railway station only a few 

 days ago, and last Tuesday the 

 venerable secretary of the Gar- 

 deners' Benevolent Society, Mr. 

 E. R. Cutler, died suddenly at 

 Wimbledon. The first and third 

 men were ripe in years, and have 

 left behind them a record of good 

 work which will not soon be 

 erased; but Mr. Casey was 

 scarcely beyond the middle age, 

 and died in harness. 



Three Good Garden Palms. — 

 Chamcedorea elatior is a Palm of 

 quite exceptional value. Among 

 the many species of this genus 

 in cultivation it is the only one 

 that may be grown in an 

 ordinary greenhouse tempera- 

 ture. It forms a tuft of bam- 

 boo-like •' green stems, about 

 eight feet or less in height, 

 and each stem bears an elegant 

 head of dark green pinnate 

 leaves. From its habit of throwing up stoloniferous offsets 

 freely from the base, it may be propagated by division in the 

 same way as answers for Rhapis. At the French exhibition, 



