170 JOURNAL OF THE EOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



soft sweet head, and the daffodils or Lenten-Hlies of England blow their 

 golden trumpets as if to summon the swallow and nightingale to the 

 climate Browning could not forget even when he was in sunny Italy. 



Amongst the best of all our native wild flowers that have already been 

 to some extent cultivated and improved we may name the wild roses, such 

 as the sweetbriar, and the Scotch and Ayrshire roses. There is now a 

 revival of rose growing and the rearing of seedlings in England, and the 

 late Lord Penzance's neAv race of cross-bred sweetbriars may be taken as 

 an object-lesson of the best. We have had no such distinct improvement 

 in native or home-reared roses since the Scotch briars {B. spinosissima) 

 and the climbing Ayrshire roses {B. arvensis) were reared nearly a century 

 ago. We should like to see the results of hybridising B. arvensis or 

 B. ruhigiiiosa with the single-flowered B. sulphiirca, a wild Persian kind, 

 or of the Burnett rose (It. spinosissima) crossed with the dwarf and 

 precocious blooming B. multiflora. But potentialities are legion when 

 we consider the roses, and we may hope for actualities as well. 



Violets, field poppy (Shirley), foxglove, lily of the valley, acjuilegia, 

 pinks and carnations, crocus, snowdrop, narcissus or daffodil, hawthorn, 

 the daisy, Viola tricolor or pansy, primrose, and the wallflower and stock 

 and wild rocket have also been improved, although much more is possible 

 and remains to be done. 



We have in our meadows and corn or turnip fields two wild chrys- 

 anthemums far finer than the wild species of China, Korea, or Japan, from 

 which the garden chrvsanthemums have been obtained. C. leucanthemiim 

 (white or oxeye) and C. segctum (corn marigold) are both worth selection 

 and cultural improvement. No window plant, if we except perhaps the 

 common musk, is so popular as is our native moneywort or " creeping 

 Jenny," of which millions must be grown in pots and window-boxes in 

 and around London alone. The evergreen Killarney saxifrage, or St. 

 Patrick's cabbage {S. nmbrosiim), is naturalised abundantly in London 

 gardens under the name of "London pride." Nothing on earth, not 

 even from the tropics, can be more fresh and beautiful than many of our 

 native or wild ferns, both evergreen and deciduous, and it is pleasant to 

 know that they are now more popular than ever and more largely grown, 

 while their names are being amended and the whole group better 

 classified. 



Wild Fruits. 



" By their fruits ye shall know them." 



Very few areas as small as are the British Islands are so rich in wild 

 fruits, flow^ering shrubs, and timber trees. English oak made England a 

 nation centuries ago, and even the acorns were formerly almost more 

 valuable as " pannage " for swine feeding than the land on which they 

 grew. Had not " Bluff King Hal fostered and patronised the importa- 

 tion of Continental fruit trees into Kent, our British and Irish gardeners 

 might have made even more than they did of our own apples or crabs, 

 pears, plums, bullaces and sloes, two sorts of cherries, sweet and bitter 

 fruited ; raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, currants, red, white and 

 black ; cranberries, and other ericaceous fruits, hazel nuts, and lastly, but 



