234 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



mid- January, came over me and I could not do the deed ; I took 

 my orders, but put in my own name instead, and I am thankful 

 to say that at the next meeting of the Council, when I confessed 

 my wickedness, I received the most complete forgiveness. And 

 so, instead of the old adage which came into your minds, I 

 would suggest as applicable to the present case the doggerel : 



The good-natured fool lets himself be dragged in, 

 When to use up an angel would be a great sin. 



And having thus dragged myself in, I had to fix upon a 

 subject ; and so I began to think over the wide scope — the 

 many-sidedness — of our old Society. I pictured to myself how 

 one of its many duties lay with what I may call the aristocracy of 

 gardeners — the men, I mean, who have vast ranges of glass 

 houses at their command, and ample funds to keep them up ; 

 how amongst them the Society should encourage the gathering 

 together of all the spoils of the tropics for the delight and 

 recreation and instruction of untravelled folk ; and then, with a 

 tremendous bound, my thoughts passed over to the humble 

 dwellers in our cottages in the country, and in flats and rooms 

 in towns, in whom our Society does all that it can to encourage 

 a love of plants, by granting medals to be competed for in their 

 local window-gardening and cottage gardeners' societies, and by 

 drawing attention to the easier grown hardy flowers and im- 

 proved varieties of common fruits and vegetables. But between 

 these two classes lies the great middle class, some of whom are 

 so worthily engaged in extending the fruit culture of this 

 country, and for whom our Society has made so many practical 

 experiments, and has recently held congresses on fruits and 

 vegetables, and the vast majority of whom are, like myself, 

 enthusiastic in their love of gardening, but have little time 

 and less money to devote to their favourite pursuit, and who, 

 consequently, want to secure the best possible results at the 

 smallest possible outlay. To these last, then, I determined to 

 say a word in season if I could, because I know by everyday 

 experience that the pleasure-gardens of a very large number of 

 the middle class of amateur gardeners like myself, and some 

 that have not the similar excuse of want of funds, are wont to 

 present a most unattractive, almost melancholy, spectacle from 

 the middle of October to almost the end of March. I determined, 



