150 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



WEDNESDAY, November 6. 

 Mr. Shirley Hibberd, F.R.H.S., in the Chair. 



THE QUEEN OF AUTUMN; OR, CHRYSANTHEMUM 

 SEEDS AND SEEDING. 



By Mr. F. W. Burbidge, F.R.H,S., F.L.S., &c, Curator of the 

 University (Trinity College) Botanical Gardens, Dublin. 



The Chinese are a peculiar people, and in many ways different 

 to the gardeners of the West. They are more insulated and self- 

 contained. Less than a century ago China was the whole world 

 to the Chinese. Although they live much nearer to the tropics 

 than we do, they have not felt that soul-hunger for the plants of 

 other and warmer lands than their own, which is such a charac- 

 teristic feature in our horticulture of to-day. The mandarins, or 

 nobles of China, allow the aristocratic Orchid to sway and nutter 

 neglected on its native bough ; but the one thing they do admire 

 and value is their native Chrysanthemum, a flower which, with 

 their neighbours the Japanese, they cultivate to perfection. It 

 is the national flower of a great and powerful people, and not 

 only of the conservative Chinese themselves, but of the more 

 liberal Japanese, and also of the people of Siam. But what at 

 the beginning of this paper I am anxious to emphasise is the 

 broad central fact that the Chinese gardeners have gone out to 

 their own waysides and hedges, and have brought into cultiva- 

 tion their own wild flowers. The Tree-Paeony, the Camellia, the 

 Azalea, the Rose, and, above all, the Chrysanthemum, are a few 

 only of their favourites, which may serve to illustrate what I 

 mean. Mr. Fortune told us, after his second return from China, 

 that the Celestial gardeners did not care for any of the plants 

 he took out with him from England, except for the scarlet Zonal 

 Pelargonium ; and certainly the faith and persistence with which 

 these people have improved their own wildings is very remark- 

 able, and I have sometimes thought that therein lies, by implica- 

 tion, the moral lesson to our British gardeners, " Go thou and 

 do likewise." I am afraid, however, we are too fond of jumping 

 to conclusions, too fond of rapid results, to take up the culture 

 of our native Corn Marigold {Chrysanthemum segetum), or our 



