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JOURNAL OF THF ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



with the season much more than foliage plants do. The succes- 

 sion runs through Tulips, Hyacinths, Primulas, Cyclamen, 

 Cinerarias, Spiraea, Deutzia, Musks, Mignonette, Marguerites, 

 Heliotropes, Fuchsias, Calceolarias, Pelargoniums, Lilies, Ivy 

 and other Geraniums, Heaths, Roses, Chrysanthemums, and 

 many others. Some have a longer period than others, but all 

 present in turn masses of colour, supremely grand at all seasons. 

 The grower of plants for market is subject to fashionable 

 caprice more than any other producer. Many flowers for almost 

 unaccountable reasons have a run for a few seasons and then get 

 somewhat discarded for newer favourites. As it takes some 

 time to raise a stock of any newly fancied variety, this artificial 

 rise and fall in value is very disheartening to growers. A faint 

 idea of the extent of this important branch of market work may 

 be gathered from the advertisement columns of the gardening 

 press, where sales of hundreds of thousands of leading market 

 varieties of young stock are quoted. In addition to the millions 

 of pots brought into London, there is a very large trade carried 

 on between the growers' places and distant centres of population, 

 many thousand boxes being thus sent direct by rail every year. 



CUT-FLOWERS. 



Besides the enormous quantity of flowers and plants in pots 

 grown for the market, there has sprung up of late years an 

 increasing trade in cut-blooms. In point of fact, many growers 

 are beginning to divert their attention from Plants to Cut-flowers, 

 as entailing less work and expense with more certain sale. In 

 this department, however, the local grower has to enter into 

 competition, not only with the surplus cut-blooms of private 

 growers and gentlemen's gardeners, but with more distant 

 English market growers, who can send supplies of cut-blooms 

 readily by rail, and also with the foreign producer, favoured with 

 cheap rates and a more genial climate. From the Riviera, for 

 instance, we have daily hundreds of baskets during the winter 

 and spring months, and this trade is largely increasing. Doubt- 

 ss there are times when this competing French flower trade 

 has a considerable effect in cheapening certain classes of English 

 goods. The choicest freshly cut home-grown flowers, however, 

 secure the best class of trade, and in this as in fruit the English 

 grower stands unrivalled. 



