January 4 , 1894. 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
1 
O NCE more I have been asked to send forth to the readers of the 
Journal a friendly salutation on the opening of the New 
Year. I could not but respond to it, although there are reasons 
why another voice and hand might be preferable, for when one 
comes to be verging on the octogenarian it is questionable whether 
younger and more active minds should not engage in the task. 
The old hunter, when he hears the pack in full cry, may raise his 
head, and snort, and whisk his tail as if he were going to engage in 
the chase ; but, alas ! he finds after a few frantic attempts that his 
limbs will not carry him, and he cannot do as he once would. So 
we may fiatter ourselves that our experience may tell for some¬ 
thing ; but, after all, the freshness and the vigour of youth are 
gone from us. 
Then again, when year after year one comes to fulfil the same 
doty, there is the dread of repeating oneself ever present. When 
I was at Deal I had once a year to perform a somewhat curious 
function. An old pilot had left a small sum of money, out of 
which a fee had to be given to the clergyman, clerk, and sexton, on 
the condition that on the anniversary of his first wife’s death a 
sermon should be preached by the parson on one particular text. 
Now as I had to do this for twenty years, it was not easy to break 
fresh ground, and consequently there was always the fear of 
repetition. The moral of this incident is evident, and if any of the 
readers of the Journal do take the trouble to look back at the past 
volumes to see what the old parson has said, they may perhaps be 
ready to say, “Why this is the same old story.” And yet the 
variations of horticulture are so many, its progress and develop¬ 
ment so great, that there must ever be some change at any rate to 
note, and therefore to give some relish to the dish. 
The year 1893 will ever remain a memorable one in the annals 
of horticulture and agriculture in this kingdom. The full effects 
of the terrible drought which for so many months prevailed over 
the southern part of our kingdom had not perhaps been fully 
realised, yet on all sides we hear how great have been the losses 
the cultivator of herbaceous plants has had to tell of, losses and 
injuries such as he had never before experienced ; and in places 
where the supply of water has been deficient every species of 
culture suffered. Many are the moans that have come from the 
cultivators of Lilies as to its evil effects on that charming tribe ; 
flowers were fully expanded a month before their time, and 
consequently were over and past much sooner than they ought to 
have been ; and as week after week the hot weather drove plants 
into flower, it became evident that when autumn really came the 
so-called autumn flowers would be past. This forwardness upset 
all the plans and calculations of growers of special flowers—Roses, 
as we all know in the south of England, were a miserable failure ; 
Carnations and Picotees were pretty well bloomed out by the time 
that the exhibition day arrived ; Gladioli, which should have been 
in full bloom about the beginning of September, were over in the 
beginning of August; and the same had to be told of most flowers, 
although by some strange perversity Chrysanthemums were in 
many districts somewhat later than usual ; but altogether we must 
put down the past year as the most disappointing one that the 
gardener has experienced for half a century. 
The most extraordinary circumstance, however, connected 
with the season was the superabundance of fruit of all descrip- 
No. 706.—VoL. XXVIII., Third Sekies. 
tions. Not only were our'gardens filled with fruit of all kinds, 
bush and tree, but every hedgerow teemed with its ripened 
fruit, while the abundance of acorns was prodigious. All this had 
a striking lesson for fruit growers. Apples, unless of the first 
class, were unsaleable, though first-class fruit was able to command 
a fair market. X have heard, for instance, of one grower who sold 
500 bushels of Lane’s Prince Albert for Ss. per bushel, while com¬ 
moner Apples had to be given to pigs and other animals to eat, 
clearly pointing again to what has been so frequently enforced in 
the Journal, that if fruit-growing is to be profitable only superior 
and saleable varieties should be grown. It is somewhat strange 
how the colour of a nasty flat Baldwin will entice buyers, who 
will turn their faces away from an English Apple not so hand¬ 
some, but with ten times the flavour in it. It is the same, say, 
with Potatoes. One is continually recommended to try some new 
variety from the other size of the Atlantic. They are, as it is 
said of them, a ball of flour, but without a particle of the true 
Potato flavour such as we get in a York or Scotch Regent. 
The year has not been one with any remarkable sensation 
in horticulture, and as London is the centre of all things to the 
Englishman so the state and condition of horticulture as exhibited 
in the metropolis is a pretty sure index how things generally are 
throughout the country. That the love of flowers and gardening 
generally is still ever increasing is testified by the wonderful growths 
of immense establishments in the neighbourhood of London and 
throughout the kingdom, where flowers, fruit, and vegetables are 
grown to meet the ever increasing demand. The result has been 
in such a season as the past of excluding many of those foreign 
competitors who have been accustomed to spoil the English market, 
and home-grown Grapes and Tomatoes have almost excluded the 
foreign ones ; and if London is the centre of horticultural enter¬ 
prise, then will all lovers of gardens ever look to the Royal 
Horticultural Society as the source of much that is of the deepest 
interest to all gardeners. During the past year it has gone on 
the even tenor of its way, and indeed has attempted something 
new. The grand scheme for a horticultural hall seems to have 
collapsed, and for the time at least the matter is shelved. 
Rumours have been circulated of a proposed return to South 
Kensington under the auspices of the Imperial Institute. Those 
who remember the miseries of those years when the Society was 
located at South Kensington might well shrink at the possibility 
of such a retrograde movement. We are assured, however, that 
it is not to be ; for although its present position leaves much to 
be desired, yet it would be a sorry thing were it to barter its 
independence for any problematical advantage. The Temple 
Show was as usual a grand success, it brought together exhibitors 
from all parts of the kingdom, and some from Belgium and 
Holland. No department of horticulture was left out, and from 
the aristocratic Orchids down to the tiniest alpines everything was 
a grand display of floral beauty to suit all tastes. The Show also 
was financially a success. The same, however, could not be said 
of the new departure at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, in the 
closing days of August. Anyone who knows the neighbourhood 
could hardly have anticipated anything else but failure. There 
was a grand collection of flowers, of fruit, and vegetables, but, alas ! 
few to look at them. The Society did what it could to open out 
new sources of interest, not without success. After all, the fort¬ 
nightly meetings form the chief source of interest in the Society’s 
proceedings. Whatever novelties the world can produce are 
brought forward, and it is sometimes wonderful to see how the 
dingy building is brightened by the multitude of brilliant 
flowers. But two things suggest themselves—one is, whether 
there is not too much of a market appearance about it, and 
whether the large collections of plants, which are the ordinary 
stock-in-trade of so many growers in the neighbourhood of London, 
might not be dispensed with when rarities and novelties would 
stand a better chance of being noticed ; the other is, whether Kew 
No. 2362.—VoL. XC., Old Series. 
