238 
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
the subject. Throughout the year the committees meet every 
fortnight, and give up the day, without fee or reward, to the 
business of the Society. They pass in review all the exhibits 
entered for certificates, and assess their merits with judgment 
and impartiality. That they do not always give universal satis¬ 
faction is to say that they are hard-working human beings. It 
is only the idlers who are never wrong, and most of us would 
prefer to be occasionally wrong with the conscientious hard- 
workers than negatively right with those who do nothing. The 
committees, moreover, supervise the numerous trials made in 
the experimental garden at Chiswick. In the old days of gloom 
and depression, when ruin seemed imminent, the committees 
continued their work as zealously as they do now under happier 
auspices. The Society is clearly under great obligations to the 
committees, and the Council did well to take an opportunity of 
expressing their recognition of the fact. 
“ Sir Trevor Lawrence, a stalwart, who stuck to the Society 
in its evil days, and is never wanting when work is to be done, 
occupied the chair, and expressed his sense of the work done by 
the committees, whom he designated as the backbone of the 
Society. Sir Trevor threw out the suggestion that sooner or 
later it would be necessary to seek some other spot for an experi¬ 
mental garden, the present garden being too limited in area, too 
much built in, and the soil more or less exhausted. Sir Trevor 
concluded his speech by drinking to the health of the com¬ 
mittees, and calling upon Mr. Thiselton-Dyer, the Director of 
the Royal Gardens, Kew, to respond. 
“ Mr. Dyer, in reply, made a graceful and sympathetic speech, 
alluding to the evil days at South Kensington, and to the 
vigorous efforts (in which Mr. Dyer himself had no small part) 
which were necessary to reinstate the Society. The committees 
also had stuck to the Society throughout, and had proved them¬ 
selves, as the President had said, the backbone of the Society. 
Mr. Dyer alluded to the first Temple Show, an undertaking 
initiated with some apprehension. The Covent Garden growers 
and others were approached on the subject, and readily re¬ 
sponded, and so the first Temple Show proved a success ; and 
subsequent j I gatherings, favoured by weather, have been in¬ 
creasingly successful. 
“ Alluding to the forthcoming Paris Exhibition of 1900, Mr. 
