LUNCHEON TO THE COLONIAL GOVEENORS, ETC. Cvii 



of giving grants ; but that, of course, was not the case, and the Board 

 had had a great deal of trouble to obtain the money. The publications 

 of the Society were of great advantage to all horticulturists. Last 

 Friday he had the privilege of travelling from Cambridge with some 

 of our Colonial visitors ; and he did not fail to point out what could 

 be seen from the train between Bishop's Stortford and London, the 

 hundreds of acres of ground in cultivation under glass. Their visitors 

 could thus obtain for themselves a rough view of what this 

 country was horticulturally. He thought, on an occasion like this, 

 of the men who had built up the Society, the Trevor Lawrences, the 

 Daniel Morrises, the Wilkses, the Yeitches, and others who had 

 made the Society what it was, and he expressed his admiration for 

 them. So long as they were able to enlist the services of such men, 

 and of men like Sir Albert Eollit, with whose name it was his privilege 

 to couple the toast, there was every reason for confidence in the 

 ; future of the Society. He gave the toast in the words of the old City 

 'Guilds: " Eoot and branch, may it live and flourish for ever." 



Sir Albert Eollit, D.C.L., LL.D., said that when he accepted the 

 compliment of responding to this toast he felt that he was really an 

 understudy, and the difficulty was not lessened by the fact that the real 

 study, the President, was present and ought really to have replied. 

 ;But, after all, that gave him a better opportunity of appreciating to 

 {their guests the services of the President and Council of the Society. 

 He was glad those services had evoked the approval of the permanent 

 I. head of the Agricultural Department of State. They had done their 

 : best to co-operate with that Department, and he thought that in one 

 , respect they had been of some help, particularly on the subject of 

 making rural education more suitable and practical, in which respect, 

 J he had, with Mr. Chittenden, represented the Council of the Society 

 ^on the Eural Education Conference. It was pleasant to be praised by 

 gthe permanent head of an Agricultural Department — especially as he 

 ™had recently had a contrary experience. He was talking to the head 

 i:Of the Agricultural Department of the United States at Washington, 

 )jwho said: " With regard to inventive and intensive cultivation, I think 

 ,|you have not done what might have been expected from you. Now, we 

 j^have devised a system by which we not only promote the growth of 

 1, vegetables , but at the same time we turn an arid, desert plot of land 

 liinto a fertile and fruitful area ; and how we do it is this : we plant 

 ;1| vigorous races of onions and potatos in alternate rows, and the onions 

 Iggrow so strong that they draw tears from the eyes of the potatos and so 

 [iiiraise the level of saturation of the whole surrounding district." As an 

 is| organization — and nearly everything that was successful was the result 

 ;|of organization; even religion was organised piety, philanthropy was or- 

 iganized benevolence, " party " was organized public opinion — the 

 ?e-R.H.S. had done its best to treat horticulture not only as a science but 

 ei;as an art and a trade ; and he did not hesitate to say that their success 

 itrwas largely due to the names of those mentioned by Sir Thomas, and 

 3: especially to the presence of the practical gardening members on their 



