17G 



JOURNAL OF TJIE KoVAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Wo hav(>, ill name, an Act for the protection {ind preservation of wild 

 birds at certain times, but its application is quite another matter, and 3'ou 

 may see men and boys killini^, and worse still mutilating,', sea birds close to 

 a coastgitard station and within sight of the printed Act itself posted on 

 the neai'est gate. 



We ought to secure an Act for the preservation or protection of wild 

 flowers also, and agitate for its enforcement until it becomes something 

 more than a dead letter. Not only are our country roadsides, hedges, and 

 ditches robbed or poached of all the most beautiful of native plants, but oven 

 i)rivat3 woods. and copses and meadows are also ruthlessly stripped by so- 

 called " collectors " and sent ofi' to wither and die in the towns. If you 

 want to see a beautiful wild flower exterminated, name it in honour of some 

 prominent politician. No, let us have our great county parks or reserva- 

 tions, and plant or sow our native wildings in honour of our best sovereigns 

 and statesmen, instead of uprooting or sacrificing them. I want to emphasise 

 the point that nothing whatever except native or British things is to be 

 fostered in the suggested county reservations. The eagle on the rock, 

 the heron in the pines, the badger in the gravelly wood, and the otter in 

 the stream, if it may be, but at all costs let us have at least one garden 

 park 01* wild park in England devoted to our native trees, shrubs, and 

 wild flowers of all kinds. These things are preserved at Kew and in 

 lapping Forest and elsewhere as far as possible, but up to the present 

 time all efibrt in gardening has been mainly expended on crowding our 

 parks and public gardens with exotic or " outlandish " things (as Parkinson 

 says), so that but few ordinary people recognise what a wealth of form 

 and colour and variety we really possess within our tiny shores. A noble 

 garden or park is possible of attainment without the use of anything from 

 other lands than our own. Fine turf, herbage of every kind, noble trees, 

 both deciduous and evergreen, reeds and bright barked osiers, or soft grey 

 willows, poplars and aspens, birch with bark like burnished silver and 

 its drooping twigs glossy and dainty as a woman's hair, ferns and moss, 

 lichen for the grey rock, water lilies, iris and great golden buttercups for 

 the waters of marsh or mere — Scotch fir, yew, juniper, better than three- 

 fourths of exotic Conifene, and everything perfectly hardy and happy in 

 the open air. We have lately been asked to pity "the cooped, cabined 

 and confined " animals and birds even in our best managed Zoological 

 Gardens, and as a hardy and dauntless race we may now and then even 

 pity the poor prisoners of the glasshouses or the "choice exotics" that 

 linger and die in British gardens throughout the land. 



Let us stop or stay the uprooting mania so far as we can and reverse 

 the process. We may plant or sow primroses everywhere in honour of 

 Beaconsfield, and we might also inaugurate a tree planting or arbour day 

 in memory of Gladstone, but above all let us make sure of public parks, 

 a circular bait around London, or county reservations for all our native 

 animals and plants, and at least have one noble wild park or purely 

 English garden near London named in honour of the late Queen and 

 Empress Victoria. 



