310 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
bald and devoid of any accessory of detail, and that nobody save 
Buonaiuti even hints at the Bute story. Where, then, did it come 
from ? Before we can put our finger on the spot I should like to give 
one or two other references to the Bute introduction which are to be 
found recorded during the Dahlia Centenary proceedings in 1889. 
In that year the National Dahlia Society celebrated the event 
some years too soon, as will be apparent at the end of this paper. In 
the spring of that year Mr. T. W. Girdlestone, then Secretary of the 
N.D.S., read a paper at the Horticultural Club, in which he said : 
"At that time [1789] Lord Bute was English Ambassador at Madrid, 
and in the same year — that is just 100 years ago< — Lady Bute sent 
seeds home to the Royal Gardens at Kew and thus first introduced 
the Dahlia into England." Kew, be it noted ; and that apparently 
trivial remark will be seen to have led to the final proof of the error 
which has so long been perpetrated. 
When the Centenary Show and Conference were held in the 
autumn of 1889 at the Crystal Palace, Shirley Hibberd, in his 
masterly style, read a paper entitled " The History of the Dahlia," 
which deserves to rank as the finest exposition of the subject ever 
yet compiled. He too says : " Lord Bute was at this time [1789] Am- 
bassador from England at the Court of Spain, and Lady Bute, who 
cherished a true sympathy with floriculture, obtained some of these 
seeds . . . but failed to keep them beyond two or three years." 
In the following year the Royal Horticultural Society held a Dahlia 
Conference at Chiswick (see R.H.S. Journal, vol. xiii. pt. i.) and 
Shirley Hibberd again discoursed on " The Origin of the Florist's 
Dahlia." He slightly varies his previous statement, but repeats the 
main fact that Lord Bute was diplomatically employed at Madrid 
in 1789. 
In the next paper to which my attention was given I was led right 
up to the authority from which it was evident that all the writers since 
1813 had copied the story, brief as it was, of the Bute introduction, 
and this will account for none of the previous writers doing so. 
We find in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society, vol. iii. 
p. 217, a paper read by Joseph Sabine on October 6, 1818. It is much 
more lengthy and comprehensive than that by R. A. Salisbury ten 
years before, and in referring to Lady Holland's introduction Mr. 
Sabine remarks that " though this importation of seeds was the most 
successful as to its produce (for from it nearly all the plants then in 
our gardens were obtained), yet the original introduction of the first 
species was (on the authority of the ' Hortus Kewensis ') from Spain in 
1789 by the Marchioness of Bute, but it is probable that the plant so 
introduced was soon after lost, as I do not find any further mention 
of it." Fraser's D. coccinea, he adds, shared the same fate. 
" On the authority of the ' Hortus Kewensis ' " ; this guarded 
parenthetical saving clause of Sabine's excited my keenest curiosity. 
Why should Sabine in 1818, at a time so close to the reputed introduc- 
tion, have been so cautious ? One would have thought that the 
