VICTORIA MEDAL OF HONOUR. 



571 



VICTORIA MEDAL OF HONOUR. 



The account of the institution of this medal was given on 

 pages 1 to 5 of the present volume. 



On October 26, 1897, the President and Council invited all 

 the sixty recipients of the medal to luncheon at the Hotel 

 Windsor, Victoria Street, Westminster, and the great majority 

 of them were able to be present. Sir Trevor Lawrence, Bart., 

 President of the Society, was in the chair, and all the other 

 members of Council were present. 



After luncheon the President gave the toast of " The Queen, 

 the Patron of our Society," which was heartily responded to. 



The President then proceeded to explain the object of the 

 gathering. He said there was a strong desire early in the 

 present year on the part of the Royal Horticultural Society to 

 do something to celebrate the long reign of Her Majesty. The 

 Queen had for many years been the patron of the Society, and 

 many members of the Royal Family were Fellows ; while they 

 would also recollect that the late Prince Consort was for some years 

 their President. For the greater part of a century the Society 

 had presided over and in a great measure directed the gardening 

 interests of this country, and he thought they would agree with 

 him that the Queen being patron of the Society, it was only 

 becoming that the Society should celebrate the remarkable 

 occasion of Her Majesty's sixty years' reign. If he were to enter 

 into the subject of the great advances made in horticulture, and 

 in all branches of gardening during that period, it would take up 

 too much of their time, and, besides, those subjects had been 

 dealt with recently by persons far abler than he was to deal with 

 them. He would only say that those people must be blind 

 indeed who could not see the enormous strides which gardening 

 had made in this country during the last fifty or sixty years. 

 He ventured to think that the great strides that had been made 

 illustrated the fact — as a fact it undoubtedly was — that gardening 

 was by no means one of the pleasures of the rich only. He 

 remembered when he had the honour of representing in Parlia- 

 ment rather a poor part of London — Battersea and Wandsworth 

 — being struck by the great care and trouble which the people 

 took with their window boxes, and he was sure that as great an 



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