l8 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
' Cornish Gilliflower ' are not the most attractive in appearance, but 
there is no question about their flavour. So it may be that we have 
lost something in fragrance in the giant Violets ; but, as I said before, 
I am not sure. In the days of our childhood we gathered Violets in 
the garden of our old home, and we shall never forget the fragrance 
of those days. Perhaps our sense of smell is not so keen as it was 
thirty years ago, or perhaps we buy our Violets now, and that makes 
all the difference. But with regard to the perfume of the giant Violets, 
I mention two or three facts which I have noticed. 
Vases which have held the blooms will retain their scent for weeks 
after the flowers have been removed. 
In a crowded Chrysanthemum show, I haveoften heard people 
say, " Oh, where are the Violets ? " when I have been standing by one 
of our exhibits. And a flower-show is a difficult place to determine 
particular perfumes. 
I remember hearing my father say that he went to the parcel office 
at Paddington for a box of Violet blooms, and the man in charge told 
him they had not arrived. But my father was perfectly sure he could 
smell them, and presently they were found. 
But there is some other subtle, indefinable charm about Violets. 
When I was a boy at a school near Bath, I remember that we would 
almost fight over the first white Violet in the Claverton hedgerows. . 
There was no other flower which we boys loved quite as much as 
we loved this flower. 
You will want me to say something about the cultivation of Violets. 
Well, at the outset, if you are half as much excited about Violets as 
I was twenty years ago, you will make them grow by hook or by crook. 
How often people have said to me, " Ah, but you have some secret 
about Violet growing, and that is why you succeed/' Well, I had 
a secret, I was in love with them — I still am, but I fear that in the 
last twenty years I have carried on a wild flirtation with Sweet Peas 
and Alpine plants. And a few other sweethearts were beginning to 
find a place in my rather susceptible affections when the war broke out, 
and we have had to look rather coldly on these darlings of ours ever 
since. We have been forced to make friends with Solanum tuberosum, 
and I have thought several times these last few days that it would 
have been far more sensible for the R.H.S. to come to Westbury- 
on-Trym and help me with my potato-planting, than for me to journey 
up to London to lecture on Violets. 
Well, we will one day be reconciled to our old sweethearts, and go 
back to our peaceful gardens once again, when the turmoil of these 
war days is ended. 
To grow Violets successfully, I think you must have a tolerably 
clear atmosphere. I do not think I have ever seen Violets doing well 
in a town. The growers at Hampton told me fifteen years ago that 
they could not grow Violets at Hampton, though, fifteen years before 
that, Hampton was, I think, the chief Violet locality for the London 
markets. 
