598 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



account manufacture positive statements out of our own futile and often 

 demonstrably erroneous guesses. 



To Idle Folk. 



By "idle" we only mean "not quite so busy as ourselves." And 

 should this catch the eye of any such, we ask them : Why do you not 

 set to work to hybridise something — to raise some new varieties or some 

 new and improved strain, for the benefit of future generations of garden- 

 lovers'? There is a wonderful opening nowadays for anyone who really 

 loves plants. Let them only take up one or at most two genera, and 

 work — aye, work at them ; turn them and twist them this way and that 

 way ; hybridise, cross, select, in all directions, backwards and forwards, 

 and cease not till something good, something well worth having, rewards 

 their labour. And for choice take hardy plants in hand, because the 

 number of people you can benefit with them is so much greater than 

 with glass-house plants. What shall you take ? Well, really, everyone 

 must choose for himself ; but that you may not say you can think of 

 nothing, we suggest — Why not seek to raise up a whole race of brilliantly- 

 coloured and perfectly hardy Anemones by crossing the common Wood 

 Anemone with Anemone coronaria, in all its glorious colours, and also 

 Avith Anemone stellata? True A. coronaria and A. stellata are both of 

 them hardy in a sense and in some places, but nothing like A. nemo- 

 rosa, the common Windflower of our woods in spring. Think how 

 generations yet unborn would bless you if you could present them with 

 a strain of nemorosa w^ith all the colours of coronaria and stellata, still 

 preserving the lovely form and free-flowering habit of neynorosa. And 

 this is but one example ; there are abundance of others as easy — or, it 

 may be, as difficult, for till it is tried no one can tell whether such a cross 

 would be easy or difficult ; but difficulties should not discourage us — only 

 inspire us to overcome them. 



The Beech-tree in England. 



At the moment we can only speak positively of the south-east of 

 England, but we should like to receive reports from other parts, for we 

 fear the Beech is doomed all over the country, and that the next genera- 

 tion will only know by pictures and reports how gloriously beautiful our 

 forest Beeches have been. 



Of recent years the Beech, in the south-east at least; has fallen a 

 victim to a little insect pest called Cryptococcus fagi To the ordinary 

 eye it presents almost exactly the appearance of the well-known 

 ' American Blight ' or * Woolly Aphis ' on Apple-trees. Whence it comes, 

 or how it travels from one tree to another or from one district to 

 another, we do not know. It first fastens on the bark of a healthy 

 tree, and looks only like a little white spot the size of a pin's head, but 

 these spots rapidly increase, and grow generally into long longitudinal 

 groups, and afterwards spread out right and left, until from a single white 

 spot, which it would take a very observant eye to notice, the whole trunk 

 and bigger, branches are often so absolutely covered with the insect as to 

 have the appearance of having been whitewashed. The insect sucks all 



