WHAT CAN WE DO AT CHISWICK ? 



171 



From Douglas's day to this he did not know of anyone who had 

 done so much for horticulture, and nothing was more interesting 

 to him than to see the plants which he introduced growing in 

 the plant borders and shrubberies. There was one great 

 difference, he said, between conducting any experiments in 

 England and abroad : it was, that abroad the Government assisted 

 and encouraged such undertakings, but in England they had to 

 be carried out by private enterprise. In the United States there 

 were so many kinds of destructive pests — both fungoid and 

 insect — that it became absolutely incumbent on the Government 

 to create experimental stations with a view to discovering the 

 best means of combating these enemies to horticulture and agri- 

 culture. He was greatly in favour of the higher education of 

 gardeners, but he thought there might be some little difficulty as 

 to enabling the Chiswick students to participate in the Kew 

 lectures. He did not anticipate any help whatever from the 

 Government in the way of a grant ; and he remembered well, 

 when Director of Kew Gardens, the great difficulty he had to 

 obtain £100 a year from the Treasury for providing lectures for 

 the young gardeners. Although he believed in lectures turning 

 out a better class of gardeners, he said that at first he was much 

 disappointed, because, after having instituted the first course of 

 lectures at Kew, he received a deputation from the young gar- 

 deners, asking that a course of lessons in " ribbon gardening" 

 should be substituted for the lectures ! 



Mr. H. J. Veitch said he remembered the gardens before their 

 dimensions had been curtailed ; and, considering the effect of the 

 drainage system and growth of London upon the atmosphere of 

 Chiswick, he thought that if experiments were to be carried out 

 on anything like a large scale, it would be advisable to conduct 

 them elsewhere than at Chiswick. The gardens of the Society 

 would, in his estimation, become gradually less valuable with 

 time as an experimental station, and it would be necessary to 

 seek a better soil and a purer atmosphere. 



Dr. C. B. Plowright was in favour of spraying experiments 

 being carried out at Chiswick, and of the results being published. 

 He noticed that in an atmosphere vitiated by sulphur, fungoid 

 diseases were almost absent. He did not know whether there 

 was much or any sulphur in the Chiswick atmosphere, but he 

 noticed a comparative absence of fungoid attacks. Dusting with 



