JOUENAL 



OF THE 



Royal Horticultueal Society. 



A METHOD OP WINTER GARDENING. 

 By the Rev. W. Wilks, M.A., Sec. R.H.S. 



[Read Jan. 14, 1890.] 



I am quite sure that when you first saw my name announced 

 as going to give you a lecture this afternoon there rose up in 

 the minds of many of you the adage, " Fools rush in where 

 angels fear to tread." But, indeed, it is not so. I have done 

 myself violence in presenting myself before you in this novel 

 character of lecturer. I have metaphorically taken myself by 

 the scruff of the neck and dragged myself to the front. And, 

 first, I will tell you how it all came about. It has seemed good 

 to the Council this year that there should be a lecture, if possible, 

 on every one of the afternoon meetings, not because hitherto our 

 audience has been so large, but in the hope that when the 

 regularity of these lectures, and the intrinsic value and interest- 

 ingness of all except this first one, became better known 

 through the medium of the Society's Journal, so, gradually, the 

 attendance of Fellows of the Society to hear them would increase. 

 Such being the case, I was instructed to invite two gentlemen, 

 one living in Cheshire, and the other in the Isle of Wight, to 

 speak to you this afternoon of Christmas Roses — Helleborus 

 niger and its varieties. Well, I frankly confess that I shrank 

 from writing those two letters, and "with honeyed words in- 

 veigling " those two gentlemen to leave their own firesides in 

 such weather as we may reasonably expect in January, to lec- 

 ture to so small an audience as we may reasonably expect to 

 have in such weather. I sat with the note-paper before me, 

 pen in hand. I got as far as " My dear Sir," and then the 

 thought of possibly cold slushy snow, or of a biting cold east 

 wind, or of a dense dark fog. and of this scantily filled hall in 



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