228 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
SECOND ANNUAL 
GREAT EXHIBITION OF, AND CONFERENCE ON, 
BRITISH-GROWN FRUIT, 
Held at the Ckystal Palace, September 26, 27, and 28, 1895. 
The second of the Society's great Shows of British -grown Fruit 
was, if possible, even more magnificent than its predecessor of 
1894. Never, in fact, before has such a grand display of home- 
grown fruit been brought together in one place, and the interest 
it excited was evidenced by the number of visitors to the Show, 
which this year reached a total of 36,293, as against 23,680 in 
1894. 
The Apples without doubt were the special feature of the 
Show this year, and the display of this the most generally useful 
of all British fruits was without any exaggeration the finest that 
has ever been seen in this or any other country in the world, and 
easily established the supremacy of our own home-grown Apples, 
at least in the attributes of flavour, size, and quality, over the 
finest picked specimens of foreign importation. The brilliancy 
of the colouring was also this year remarkable, so that even in 
this, which is usually their one (but only) point of superiority 
over British fruit, the foreign examples were fully equalled if not 
excelled. It is impossible to convey by words any adequate 
description of how grand the Apples were. 
Another very noticeable point was the extreme beauty of Mr. 
Rivers' group of dwarf trees in pots. Apples, Pears, Grapes, Figs, 
Nectarines, Peaches, all were there, and all laden with gloriously 
coloured, luscious-looking, juicy fruits. Baskets of fruit were 
placed amongst the stems of the trees, and the inter-spaces grace- 
fully filled up with Selaginella and other mosses. 
Messrs Sutton's Tomatos must also certainly be described as 
another noticeable point, the brilliant colouring compelling the 
attention of the eye to a vividness which seemed almost to crave 
for the relief of some less self-assertive colour. Beautiful as this 
fruit is, and deservedly popular as it lias of late years become, 
60 feet by 6 feet of nothing but Tomatos — weighing almost two 
