HORTICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS AND SCHEDULES. 529 



page 31, " R.H.S. Judging Code," the subject need not be further 

 pursued here ; but space may, perhaps, be afforded for something 

 that has not hitherto been published. 



Oeigin and History of Exhibition Groups. 



As this has not been written, and as few persons are in- 

 timately acquainted with the facts, it may be desirable to record 

 them, with accuracy, in the Journal of the Boyal Horticultural 

 Society. The late Hon. Alexander Leslie-Melville was the 

 originator of these groups ; and it may here be incidentally men- 

 tioned that his brother, the Hon. William Leslie-Melville, was the 

 first to send seeds of the Deodar (Cedrus Deodara) from the 

 Himalayan Mountains, in 1831, to his ancestral home in Fife- 

 shire, where two or three of the first British-raised trees are 

 still flourishing. " The introduction of the Deodar," observes 

 Mr. Veitch, in his admirable " Manual of Conifera?," " marks an 

 epoch in the annals of British arboriculture." But let that 

 pass. 



Mr. A. Leslie-Melville was a great lover of gardening, and 

 President of the Lincoln Horticultural Society. Observing that 

 all the prizes for " specimen plants " went in rotation to those 

 gardeners who alone in the district had structures of sufficient 

 capacity for growing them, and believing that equally good culture 

 was displayed in smaller plants of a decorative character grown 

 by amateurs and gardeners in smaller structures, he proposed in 

 the " sixties," through the Cottage Gardener, that prizes should 

 be offered for such plants pleasingly arranged. 



His society not responding, he resolved to test the prac- 

 ticability of the matter in a small way, and offered, to working 

 amateurs, a garden frame for the best collection of small 

 plants arranged in the space the frame would occupy, or about 

 36 square feet. The result was such as to justify the Society in 

 offering in the following year, what was a great sum in those days, 

 prizes of £3, £2, and £1 for larger groups of plants effectively 

 arranged, open to all England. There were ten competitors, 

 and the writer of these lines had the honour of winning the 

 first prize. That was, I think, in 1869. Subsequently a show 

 was held in a suburb of the city, inaugurated by the Vicar of 

 Bracebridge, the Rev. C. C. Ellison, who still takes an active 

 interest in gardening. The munificent sum of £5 was provided 



