DAFFODIL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION. 



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into our fold. We then met in a place not our own, where our 

 presence was a matter of sufferance ; we are now meeting in our 

 own grounds, and if not under our own fig-tree, at least under 

 our own vine. 



I do not quite know what to say in the form of an opening 

 address on this occasion. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that 

 the keynote of our meeting here seems to be that we are gardeners, 

 that we are brought together because of our love of flowers, and 

 that the object of our conference is to increase that love. There 

 is an old saying of Goethe, in " Wilhelm Meister " I think, " Take 

 care of the beautiful, the good and true will take care of them- 

 selves." The prime duty of this Conference is to take care of 

 the beauty of the Daffodil. 



We find in life that, in attempting to attain an end, 

 we are often led into paths which seem indirect ; and one 

 way to take care of the beauty of the Daffodil is to take 

 care of its names. The greater our love of plants is, and 

 the more attention we pay to them, the greater is the necessity 

 which arises for giving names. There is no such necessity for 

 him who does not care much for Daffodils, and to whom a 

 Daffodil is a yellow Daffodil and nothing more. If you show to 

 such a person a wild Pseudo-Narcissus or the " Glory of Leyden," 

 he will say they are both Daffodils. But we who are led more 

 and more to take an interest in each individual form, and 

 to make increasing distinctions between the several forms, 

 are driven to the use of a number of names. Now in using 

 names there are, I take it, two rules which we should adopt. 

 The one is that a name should only be applied where it is neces- 

 sary. In the case of all the forms occurring wild in nature a 

 name is necessary, because these are, so to speak, the letters by 

 which Nature spells out to us her lessons ; and it is necessary 

 that each letter should be recognised. Besides these forms 

 which occur in nature we have a variety of forms produced by the 

 hand of man — some by direct hybridisation through his own 

 hands, some through sowing seeds which insects have fertilised. 

 In this way we are gradually acquiring a large number of new 

 forms, and the question arises : Which of these forms deserve 

 names ? I think I shall not be far from the right solution 

 in saying that new names should be given only to those forms 

 which on the one hand possess sufficient individuality, so that 



