100 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Be generous. Freely ye have received ; freely give duplicates, 

 roots, cuttings, pipings, buds, and seeds. 



Promote that reciprocity and sympathy which you will find 

 in all true florists. I have had and have "troops of friends," 

 royal and rough, high and low, rich and poor, social, ecclesias- 

 tical, literary, artistic, sporting (I followed foxes and partridges 

 for more than half a century), but I have found no class of men 

 more genial or more generous than those who love their gardens. 

 I once asked the head gardener, in the absence of the owner, of 

 one of the most beautiful gardens in England whether I could 

 walk through the grounds, and I added that my name was Hole. 

 And when he inquired " Mr. Eeynolds Hole ? " and I replied in 

 the affirmative, I was first of all astonished by the abrupt manner 

 in which he turned his back upon me and then elated by the 

 words which he spoke to one of his subordinates, " John, set the 

 fountains playing ! " And a few thousand miles away on the 

 other side of the Atlantic there was scarcely a city in which we 

 were not welcomed by florists, scarcely an hotel in which we did 

 not find some boxes of beautiful flowers. The love of gardening 

 makes the whole world kin. 



I ask those who know much more of gardening than I do, to 

 pardon, for the sake of those who know less, suggestions which 

 may have seemed to them prolix, superfluous ; and I desire to offer 

 my most hearty thanks to all for the kind, patient sympathy with 

 which they have listened to my words. 



GARDEN LITERATURE. 



By Mr. F. W. Buebidge, M.A., F.L.S., F.R.H.S. 



[Read at Chester, August 4, 1896.] 



" They set great store by their gardiens." Sir Thos. More (Lord 

 Chancellor), 1480-1535. 



We are told that " words make haste to follow things," and so 

 there must have been gardens before books about gardening 

 appeared. The art or craft of gardening has existed in some 

 form or other from the earliest and rudest times. The most 



