JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 

[Read February 27, 1917; Mr. E. A. Bowles, M.A., in the Chair.] 
Within the past twenty years, the number and quality of new in- 
troductions among herbaceous plants, the wonderful extension of 
their cultivation, the improved methods of exhibiting at shows, and 
the more tasteful and appropriate arrangements in gardens, have all 
reached a greater development than in any previous period of similar 
length. 
With regard to new introductions from distant lands, we have 
had many which are valuable acquisitions, not only on account of their 
intrinsic charms, but because of their great possibilities and usefulness 
for hybridizing and cross-fertilizing purposes. China has proved a 
fertile source of treasures of which you have heard, read, and seen 
sufficient to render it superfluous for me to deal at length with them. 
In not a few cases the plant-breeder is provided with ample scope 
for the exercise of his skill in raising and selecting forms that in 
some feature or other shall be more suitable for British culture than 
the original types. 
A good many of the Primulas, Androsaces, and Meconopses have 
peculiarities which have thus far prevented them making themselves 
quite at home, so to speak, in this country, but their extreme beauty 
warrants a deal of effort to try to improve them in the matter of 
hardiness, and it is my belief that this can be as well accomplished by 
Vol. XLIII. 1917. 
Part I. 
THE HERBACEOUS BORDER. 
By John Dickson, F.R.H.S. 
VOL. XLIII. 
