288 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the subject. Throughout the year the committees meet every 

 fortnight, and give up the day, without fee or reward, to the 

 business of the Society. They pass in review all the exhibits 

 entered for certificates, and assess their merits with judgment 

 and impartiality. That they do not always give universal satis- 

 faction is to say that they are hard-working human beings. It 

 is only the idlers who are never wrong, and most of us would 

 prefer to be occasionally wrong with the conscientious hard- 

 workers than negatively right with those who do nothing. The 

 committees, moreover, supervise the numerous trials made in 

 the experimental garden at Chiswick. In the old days of gloom 

 and depression, when ruin seemed imminent, the committees 

 continued their work as zealously as they do now under happier 

 auspices. The Society is clearly under great obligations to the 

 committees, and the Council did well to take an opportunity of 

 expressing their recognition of the fact. 



" Sir Trevor Lawrence, a stalwart, who stuck to the Society 

 in its evil days, and is never wanting when work is to be done, 

 occupied the chair, and expressed his sense of the work done by 

 the committees, whom he designated as the backbone of the 

 Society. Sir Trevor threw out the suggestion that sooner or 

 later it would be necessary to seek some other spot for an experi- 

 mental garden, the present garden being too limited in area, too 

 much built in, and the soil more or less exhausted. Sir Trevor 

 concluded his speech by drinking to the health of the com- 

 mittees, and calling upon Mr. Thiselton-Dyer, the Director of 

 the Royal Gardens, Kew, to respond. 



" Mr. Dyer, in reply, made a graceful and sympathetic speech, 

 alluding to the evil days at South Kensington, and to the 

 vigorous efforts (in which Mr. Dyer himself had no small part) 

 which were necessary to reinstate the Society. The committees 

 also had stuck to the Society throughout, and had proved them- 

 selves, as the President had said, the backbone of the Society. 

 Mr. Dyer alluded to the first Temple Show, an undertaking 

 initiated with some apprehension. The Covent Garden growers 

 and others were approached on the subject, and readily re- 

 sponded, and so the first Temple Show proved a success ; and 

 subsequent] Igatherings, favoured by weather, have been in- 

 creasingly successful. 



"Alluding to the forthcoming Paris Exhibition of 1900, Mr. 



