ESSAYS SUBMITTED BY WISLEY STUDENTS 



IN PART QUALIFICATION FOR THE DIPLOMA OF THE SCHOOL. 



EXPLANATORY NOTE. 



Some few Fellows of the Society, and, I fear, a good many professional 

 gardeners, are somewhat sceptical of the good work which the Society 

 is doing at Wisley for the practical education of the Students. It 

 is almost useless to refer such sceptics to the statistics of our Annual 

 Examii^ation at Wisley and point out how well the Students acquit 

 themselves, because the reply is almost universally, "Oh, I don't 

 believe in Examinations." 



Now one item of this Annual Examination is that every Student 

 has to write an Essay on any subject he likes connected with his 

 work, and it occurred to me that if one or two of these Essays were 

 published exactly in the form and word for word as they were sent 

 in, without any correction whatsoever, it might serve to show the 

 Fellows something of the result of our Wisley teaching and prove 

 how useful and practical it is in its application. 



I have therefore obtained the consent of the Council to the 

 publication — not of one, for one might be considered as possibly 

 quite exceptional, but — of four of these Essays written for this year's 

 Examination (1913) ; and I have purposely chosen them on widely 

 differing subjects, so as to show how wide and practical is the scope 

 of our Wisley teaching. 



I have requested Mr. Chittenden, the Director of the Wisley 

 School, to be so kind as to put in footnote corrections of any note- 

 worthy errors, so that these Essays may not mislead our Fellows 

 in any way, or make them suppose that they are absolute perfection. 

 The only other corrections are a few very sUght grammatical emendations 

 where the English seemed somewhat harsh. They are not perfect, but 

 we consider them to be very highly creditable both to the Students 

 themselves and to the whole Teaching Staff of the Society. 



The order in which the Essays are printed is not that of merit, 

 but alphabetical of the names of the Students. 



W. WiLKS, 



Secretary, R.H.S. 



