332 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



As we stand here to-day two men will be in all our thoughts — Mr. 

 G. F. Wilson, whose loving care and horticultural skill originally made 

 the Garden what it was, and Sir Thomas Hanbury, who prevented it 

 from being broken up, and, with his usual liberality, presented it to the 

 Society. 



I have now the pleasure of proposing " Prosperity to the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society." The Society dates back more than a hundred years. 

 It was founded as long ago as 1804 by Mr. Thomas Andrew Knight, Sir 

 Joseph Banks, and other distinguished botanists, but for many years it 

 vegetated rather than flourished. 



When your present President was elected in 1885 the Society had 

 1,108 Fellows — a goodly number certainly, but not enough — and the 

 Society was in some pecuniary difficulties. Owing largely to his ability 

 and energy it has now nearly 10,000 Fellows, has assets, without counting 

 Wisley, of some £70,000, and an annual income of £18,000. 



Your centenary in 1904 was marked by the erection in Vincent Square 

 of an Exhibition Hall and Library, costing £42,000 — raised mainly by 

 private subscription — and also by Sir Thomas Hanbury's munificent gift 

 of this Wisley property, one of his many public benefactions. Mr. Wilson, 

 one of our many City men who have taken a warm interest in science, 

 devoted his leisure during twenty-four years to the planting, arrangement, 

 and development of the Garden, which comprises sixty acres. 



In adding this Laboratory to the important gift of the Garden you 

 have, I understand, two main objects in view— 



1. The improvement of Horticulture by giving the best possible 



training to a number of young gardeners, and 



2. The promotion of horticultural and botanical science by experi- 



ment and investigation. 



The erection of this Laboratory and Research Station meets a long- 

 felt want in connection with the Society's work. In the United States, 

 and in many of our own Colonies, there are several such stations under 

 Government supervision and maintenance, but in the home country their 

 initiation, direction, and support are left to private enterprise. The good 

 work being done at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, at the Botanic 

 Gardens of Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, and other Universities, is well 

 known and appreciated, as is also the experimental work for some years 

 past undertaken at Rothamsted by the late Sir John Lawes and at Woburn 

 by the Duke of Bedford. 



Among "the subjects it is hoped to experiment upon in the near 

 future are soil-sterilisation by steam as a means of destroying pests of 

 plants which live in the soil ; an investigation into the influence of 

 sterilisation on the plants cultivated in the soil ; study of the bacterial 

 flora of the soil ; etherisation of plants ; and certain plant diseases. Each 

 of these subjects will entail a large amount of laboratory work, as well as 

 experiments in the Garden." 1 



When we look round us at the endless variety of trees, shrubs, and 

 herbs, no two alike in their form, their leaves, their flowers, their fruit, 

 or their seeds, and when we reflect that for^every difference in form and 

 1 Gardeners' Chronicle, April 13, 1907,~p. 233. 



