100 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



hybrids to be raised — e.g., let liirn bring us hybrids of poeticus 

 with mandrils or cyclamineus. For the unscientific lover of 

 flowers there remain some ideally beautiful things to be produced : 

 he may bring us the giant white and scarlet mcomparabilis. And 

 if some faint-hearted gardener objects that this is the work of 

 years, and that he will labour, but the market-gardener will enter 

 into his labours. — well, is not] this true of human work at large ? 

 Men must be like the bees, which still make honey and are prob- 

 ably happy over it, though it was remarked two thousand years 

 ago that they do not make it for themselves. 



DISCUSSION. 



The Chairman (the Rev. W. Wilks | said : Before proceeding 

 to put to the vote this proposal of a vote of thanks to Mr. Bur- 

 bidge and Mr. Engleheart, for the most valuable papers which 

 they have read to us to-day — papers which are the result of years 

 of patient observation and study — I may perhaps be excused if I 

 venture to make a few practical remarks on a branch of the sub- 

 ject which did not fall within the province of either of these 

 papers. 



People come to these Spring meetings of ours and see such 

 glorious displays of Daffodils, that knowing them to be thoroughly 

 hardy, they are often inspired with a longing to grow them in 

 their own gardens. That is excellent ; it is one of the purposes 

 for which our meetings are held ; but let us imagine some one 

 who knows little or nothing of Daffodils to be thus inspired. He 

 goes round the groups and begins jotting down the names of the 

 flowers that most take his fancy, and I venture to say that in 

 less than five minutes he is either floundering hopelessly amid 

 a multitude of names of flowers that to a beginner seem so much 

 alike, and that even experts are not seldom at a difficulty to dis- 

 tinguish ; or else he has covered two or three pages of a note- 

 book with names of flowers which to his eye seem all, and almost 

 equally, desirable. Thus, confused and confounded by the 

 multitude of the names and the similarity of the flowers, many 

 people give the thing up for hopeless, and take refuge in a 

 catalogue, where, although they find a still more bewildering 

 profusion of names, they fancy that in the descriptions so vividly 

 drawn, and in the prices, they will have some reliable guide. 



