Ma«h 28, 1895. 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
269 1 
lights it might often answer as a propagating frame when not 
wanted for the accommodation of small unhealthy plants ; indeed, 
a plant hospital once started would, in many instances, serve the 
purpose of a propagating house as well. There would, however, 
be this distinction between the two. Propagating houses are 
usually and preferably low and comparatively small structures, 
but the kind of house I am now treating of must be high enough 
in some part to give head room for Palms 8 or 9 feet in height, 
because it is such plants as these that are invaluable for decorative 
purposes. Yet strange though it be, it is none the less a fact that 
in very few gardens do suitable places exist where such plants 
when once unhealthy can be given the most favourable treatment 
to secure a speedy return to vigour. What they require is bottom 
heat, a brisk top heat, and plenty of atmospheric moisture, in 
conjunction with judicious shade. Give these conditions for 
six months shabby plants will make more progress than they do 
in a couple of years under the treatment generally accorded them. 
To secure the conditions just enumerated without having the 
narrow bed running round the sides of the house too far from the 
glass, the roof of our plant hospital should be formed on a rather 
acute angle. Instead of the usual tile or stone floor one of gravel 
or clinkers broken in small pieces should be formed, as the 
necessary atmospheric moisture could be much more easily main¬ 
tained under such conditions than when floors having a surface 
which favours rapid evaporation are in use. and appearances would 
be of very little moment in a plant hospital ; the great object of it 
should be to enable the cultivator to bring sickly plants as speedily 
as possible to health again. The idea, as I have roughly sketched it 
out, is perhaps not unworthy of the notice of readers of the 
Journal of Horticulture. —H. Dunkin. 
MOVEABLE FEASTS. 
Flora and Pomona, whose joint feast days are celebrated by 
horticulturists at stated intervals under the popular cognomen of 
flower shows, are, as a rule, fixed long prior to the consummation 
of the event; fixed as irrevocably as the laws of the Medes and 
Persians. In the ordinary course of things the wisdom of this 
pre-ordination is obvious, but considering that most potent factor, 
the weather, which so often and so seriously mars the best laid 
plans, it is better to face than to ignore the shady side of the 
subject. There are times when this is so forcibly brought home 
to all concerned that the question is raised as to the wisdom of 
concerting with the season instead of fighting against it, and to 
make our flower shows moveable feasts. The possibility of doing 
so is more apparent than the practicability, for doubtless there 
are prospective complications, yet with a choice of evils it is wise to 
choose the least. 
Exhibitors, even those whose experience is limited to a few 
years’ observation, will readily allow that the subject is an 
important one. Those who are vitally interested in the welfare 
of the societies they represent will not deny that it is an anxious 
one, and to the general public, should an abnormally early or 
late season result in a poor display, may be traced much of that 
diffidence in patronising the horticultural field days, for a bad 
impression is harder to erase than a good one. 
In the cycle of the seasons spring, summer, autumn, winter 
the bill of fare—the schedule—is arranged to levy the heaviest 
contributions characteristic of each season at a fixed date. 
Comprised, as exhibitions usually are, of various sections—flowers, 
fruits, vegetables, and plants—one section alone generally forma a 
central object, which if by untoward circumstances is so poorly 
represented as to be practically absent, results in placing that 
exhibition in the same position as the play of Hamlet with the 
Prince of Denmark missing. That such occurs at times is an 
accepted fact. 
In looking back instances may be noted in which the leading 
classes of a spring show have all but resulted in blanks—seasons 
in which at a fixed date the flowers of spring have well-nigh faded 
and gone, or what is probably worse, have not arrived. So, in the 
summer with the Rose show, placing this important floral feast in 
the anomalous position of being such in name only. Autumn and 
winter no less illustrate the evil which may or may not be pre- 
ventible. One thing is certain, whether the seasons are early or 
late, we must take them as they come, but it does not follow that as 
we are unable to bend them to our purpose, that our purpose should 
not bend to them and be made to stretch either way in the same 
elastic manner. 
Whether such can be done is the present question, and a ques¬ 
tion not presented for the first time. Whether such will be done 
and any difficulties ensuing be made subservient to the benefits it 
would confer remains to be seen. It is only during abnormal conditions, 
of which the present year bids fair to furnish a practical example. 
that we can hope for the matter to be entertained. Influences of 
the season are the direct controlling powers of outdoor vegetation. 
In some degree we are, in the glass department, independent of the 
weather, yet not wholly so, and there are times when all the means 
furnished by skill and anxiety fall provokingly short of the 
desired object. A severe strain is at times entailed on an exhibitor 
and his staff with the concurrent anxiety in watching the tardy 
development of certain plants, due, in beat conditions, at a certain 
date. This feeling is intensified when the opposite extreme occurs, 
and the same plants are found at their best whilst the important 
day yet looms in the distance. 
An exhibitor can, of course, derive a doubtful satisfaction from 
knowing his competitors are fellow sufferers; but if they can 
enjoy this qualified consolation it is not shared by the society, 
which suffers a great deal in pocket and some little in prestige. 
With a society sufficiently powerful to draw competitors from 
the two ends of the kingdom, even beyond, the same conditions 
do not obtain, for in this case deficiency in the North is compen¬ 
sated by the South, or vice versa. It is rather with those societies 
which draw their support from a circumscribed area that the weak 
points are felt, and being conscious of this weakness the possibility 
of curing it is worthy of being entertained. 
With some few local societies the moveable system is practised 
when occasion demands, and found to work satisfactorily. These, 
perhaps, have not to contend with the same difficulties, the chief 
of which is probably the use of buildings or grounds, which can 
only be available at a long notice and for the time pre-ordained. 
Doubtless this is a problem capable of various solutions. An 
objection which has been advanced is that altering the date of one 
exhibition—say a Rose show, might clash with a similar meeting 
elsewhere. But this is merely a matter for mutual arrangement 
by the separate committees, and the reasons which affect one apply 
to both. 
Taking the Rose show as a prominent example of the subject, 
it is not difficult to guage a month previous to the date fixed on 
how matters are likely to stand when it comes round, and if put 
to the vote by the leading exhibitors a consensus of opinion and 
prompt action would prevent this show being held without the 
Roses ; figuratively, of course, for though the “ last Rose of summer ” 
may be present, or the earliest specimen, and with a walk over 
carry off the prizes, it is highly unsatisfactory. It is indeed 
sad, as a lady once remarked to the writer, to see a Rose show 
without Roses. 
There could not be any difficulty in making public such altera¬ 
tions as might be decided on when the necessity arises, and doubt¬ 
less the public would infinitely prefer to have a good feast, though 
moveable, to a meagre display. Certainly exhibitors would, and 
the intelligence conveyed on a postcard would come as a welcome 
relief to many who daily, as the festival approaches, hope where 
no hope is, and grumble at weather which cannot be cured ; at 
fixed rules which r^just be endured, when a little time either way 
would do so much for all concerned, for “Time, like money, is 
measured by our needs.”—B. K., Dublin. 
VINES AND VINERIES. 
Me. Taylor’s article on the above subject in the Journal of 
Horticulture, page 208, opens an interesting and important question on 
these two heads. That Vines thrive and finish their fruit better in 
houses that are not too much set to the sun, there can be no doubt at 
all. The sun never has the same power to burn the foliage in flat- 
roofed houses. In such a structure the atmospheric moisture is not 
so quickly dried up, so that the temperature remains more uniform 
and humid, and is not so sensitive to the outside changes, owing to the 
presence of a large volume of air of a moist nature that is at all times 
so beneficial to the general health of the Vines. 
To grow Vines successfully in the modern vinery containing large 
squares of wide glass with few laps and an acute angle of the roof is 
not so easy a matter. On such a house the sun has a scorching effect, 
because there is nothing to break its force, and in a short time the 
atmosphere becomes so dry that to preserve the necessary amount of 
moisture in the house there is a continual need for damping, too much 
of which is not advantageous. 
The heat that rises in a lean-to house facing due south at midday, 
when the thermometer registers between 70° and 80° in the shade out¬ 
side, is quite enough to destroy the best of foliage, for when all is so hot 
and dry, vapour, after the house has been damped, arises and condenses 
on the edges of the leaves, which in turn become scorched and soon 
afterwards crumble up, preventing healthy circulation of the sap. No 
amount of ventilation will prevent this to a certain de,.ree happening. 
To open the ventilators widely at the ton and bottom in the hope of 
preventing it, in a measure aggravates the evil, as the current is too 
strong and creates a draught which carries off the natural moisture and 
leaves the atmosphere of the house parched, the very opposite of what 
