500 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The diversified and meritorious displays of plants, flowers, 

 fruits, and vegetables, and of cultural skill, which have been 

 provided from year to year, have exerted enormous influence in 

 quickening the zeal, intensifying the love, and bracing the energies 

 of those who have shared in producing them. They thus, as a 

 natural corollary, stimulate to greater effort in quest of still 

 higher achievements. 



Our horticultural exhibitions do that and a great deal more. 

 With magnet-like force they attract and hold the minds of 

 visitors, who become entranced with some object or another 

 from which they drag themselves with reluctance, only to be 

 haunted with its charms. In a word, they are " captured." 

 And thus are recruits being constantly enrolled in the noble 

 army of horticulturists. This extension of interest in gardening 

 is ever going on and increasing, as it must increase in proportion 

 to the number of centres from which the wholesome influence 

 emanates — diffusing itself like some mystic perfume — sweetening 

 the lives of those who breathe it in deeply — a new breath of life, 

 indeed, it is to them, and they feel the world a better world than 

 it was before. 



Not only in the metropolis of the empire are the meetings in 

 this hall and shows of various kinds in and around the city 

 playing a great part in the conversion of the heathen, who have 

 not yet learned to love their gardens as they ought, but effective 

 auxiliaries are formed in earnest co-workers in the provincial 

 cities and towns of the United Kingdom. And also these centres 

 of "sweetness and light" — flower shows — are spreading into 

 rural villages in various parts of the country. New tastes are 

 being steadily but surely created, and as the 11 appetite grows 

 with what it feeds upon," the future of horticulture is safe. It 

 contains within its huge horn of plenty enough for all : the rich 

 and the rare for the affluent, the not less wholesome or less 

 beautiful if cheaper fare for the workers ; and, depend upon it, it 

 will not bo till both men of wealth and men of labour share in 

 due proportion in tho good things of Mother Earth that our 

 land can be made the land of Goshen that every true lover of 

 his country wishes it to be. 



Let us, then, wish prosperity to horticultural shows of all 

 kinds and sizes and in all places, for if well conducted and 

 successful all are doing good. All, however, it has to be 



