450 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE DOUBLE STOCK, ITS HISTORY AND BEHAVIOUR. 



Lecture delivered at the Meeting of the British Association 

 FOR THE Advancement of Science in Australia, in August 

 1914. By Edith R. Saunders, F.L.S., Lecturer and late Fellow 

 Newnham College, Cambridge. 



The double flower is a variation much sought after by the gardener, 

 his aim being to obtain the maximum colour effect within the limits 

 of the number of plants and the amount of space at his disposal. 

 From this point of view the double Stock certainly affords excellent 

 material, for a good double-flowered plant presents an almost solid 

 mass of bloom, and, being particularly an EngHsh garden plant, it 

 has associations as well as scent and suitability for mass colour effects 

 in its favour. Even at the beginning of the last century certain 

 strains had been brought to a high degree of perfection. Henry 

 Phillips,* writing at this time and commending some plants which 

 he had seen exhibited before the Horticultural Society of London, 

 describes them as having flowers " like ropes of Roses." The same 

 writer amusingly recounts the effect which the sight of some Stocks 

 had upon an English gentleman of his acquaintance, who had accom- 

 panied him on a visit to Normandy. This gentleman's tastes were 

 so essentially British that nothing in his foreign experiences could 

 please or satisfy him, until, as Phillips relates, the situation was 

 saved in an unlooked-for v/ay. His description of the incident runs 

 thus : — 



" The soup was meagre, the pottage was acid, the peas were sweet, 

 the coffee was bitter, the girls were brown, their eyes too black, their 

 caps too high, their petticoats too short, their language an unintelligible 

 jarg n, their houses old, their inns dirty, the country too open, the 

 roads too straight ; in short he saw ever3^thing with such discontented 

 eyes as to render the party uncomfortable until good fortune led 

 us to a rustic inn, where in a small garden were growing several fine 

 Stocks, which he affirmed were the first good things he had seen 

 since he left Sussex ; and on hearing L'Hotesse acknowledge them 

 as Girofliev de Brompfon, he insisted on halting at her house where 

 he treated the party with un dejeuner d la fourchette, and left the 

 village with a sprig of the Brompton Stock in his button-hole, his 

 eyes sparkling with champagne and good humour, which lasted for the 

 remainder of the journey, during which time he often said, ' Thanks 

 to the Brompton Stock.' " 



As regards the date and place of the first appearance of the double 



* Flora Historica, vol. ii. (182.^), p. 28. 



