May :4,1894. 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
415 
With amateurs success has been more diversified, Mr. Lindsell of late 
being able to defeat all comers early in the year, and the amateurs’ 
trophies going to various competitors at the northern Shows ; but here I 
only speak of the big amateurs who grow from 3000 to 18,000 Roses, and 
with all the respect due to their exhibiting powers and the feeling of 
personal regard I have for many of them, I may say that I do not con¬ 
sider the metropolitan Show so important a question for these greater 
growers as I do for the smaller amateurs—'namely, those growing under 
2000 Rose plants. I say this in view of the fact that you can count the 
numbers of these giants on the fingers of your hands, whereas the smaller 
growers are counted by hundreds. The giant enters the arena knowing 
exactly whom he will in all likelihood meet at certain dates and seasons ; 
the smaller rosarian competes in a g'jod season against at least a dozen 
or more in every class, many of his opponents being dark horses ; but to 
my mind this uncertainty gives the zest and excitement to exhibiting. 
It palU on you when you know that year after year A must meet B, (J, 
and D, and has no dark X, Y, or Z in the bac’xground. Whether the 
growers of Roses on heavy land, in the cold eastern districts, or in the 
districts north of the Trent, believe it or not, it is absolutely correct to 
say that the Rose season of the south is of a most ephemeral character, 
and that in consequence of our infirmity in that respect our Roses are 
soon over if the season be an early or a hot one, such as the years 1887, 
1839, 1893, and possibly 1891. This year may, however, be saved by 
its humidity, a possibility I had the good fortune to predict in March. 
With the knowleJge of our short season we, whose best flowers are so 
fleeting, are far more anxious than the stayers on late land that proper 
dates be fixed for our meetings. It should be of little consequence to 
an amateur who boasts he can show from June right up to and into 
August, whether the dates be a week earlier or later, but to smaller 
rosarians or growers in early districts, if the season be adverse by its 
earliness or abnormal heat, as in 1893, the date of our Crystal Palace 
Show is of the first importance, as small growers show at only one or 
two places, and prefer if it be possible to show at the Crystal Palace 
meeting. That the opinion of the majority of our members is in favour 
of an early date was clearly shown by a vote which I took of over 100 
members last August, the result being thus given :—Those in favour of 
a date alternating between the last week in June and the first week in 
July, 82 per cent.; those in favour of a date between the 4th and 
14th July, 18 per cent. 
It strikes me that now the Drill Hall Show has been given up as a 
failure, and a small southern Show (which apparently is to be held in 
future in the west and midlands of England, and not in the south) 
temporarily established in its place, those who are working for late 
dates at the Crystal Palace are trying to prove that we in the south, 
having a southern Show, are not entitled to have the metropolitan 
Show at an early date. If this be the idea, and I am now rather 
inclined to think that this so-called southern Show was originally 
suggested in order to advance this argument, then I am certainly in 
favour of having only two Shows for the Society—viz., a metropolitan 
Show, for the rosarians whose best flower season is usually from 
mid-June to the first week in July, who live in the southern, 
western, and metropolitan counties, to be held about the Ist July ,• 
and a northern Show, as hitherto, to be held at a date to be decided 
by northern members ; also that the money prizes be more evenly 
divided than hitherto, so that the north can have no fair cause for 
complaint. I certainly am not inclined to rest patiently under the 
present system, if it means a series of dismal meetings at the Crystal 
Palace, such as that in 1893 ; and I also think our metropolitan members 
will be gravely and reasonably dissatisfied if the Executive does not find 
some remedy for a difficulty which is a constant source of annoyance 
and dissatisfaction.— Chakleb J. Grahame. 
P.S.—Since writing the above article a frost of severity has visited 
us during the night of the 20th or the morning of the 21st inst. I regret 
to say that the plants of many of my rosarian friends residing within a 
radius of twenty miles of the metropolis have suffered terribly, and as 
this will cripple their exhibiting power I fear that 1894 will prove only 
one more year of disappointment to such of us as were looking forward 
to a really good Rose year.—C. J. G. 
EEVIEW OF BOOK. 
The Natural History of Plants. By Professor F. W. Oliver. 
London : Blackie & Son. 
We have received from Messrs. Blackie & Son the first of a series of 
sixteen monthly parts of a work bearing the above title. The present 
edition is an English translation made by Professor F. W. Oliver from 
the original German of Anton Kerner Von Marilaun, Professor of 
Botany in the University of Vienna. How much the work owes to the 
English translator and the two ladies who assist him those who have not 
perused the original can form no opinion, but the first number exhibits 
a perspicacity of treatment and a simplicity of expression which we are 
wont to consider as rather uncharacteristic of the German intellect in 
its deeper workings. Indeed, considering the comparatively unpopular 
nature of the subject, the treatment is as popular as it is conceiveable 
for it to be, and the paucity of technical terms a feature very highly to 
be commended. 
Whenever technical names or terms serve as a lingua franca between 
scientific men of different lands the prodigal use of them is intelligible 
and justified, but in vernacular publications issued with the professed 
object of enlightening the uninformed their incessant use seems rather 
to frustrate than promote the intentions of the writers. It is difficult to 
understand why some scientific authors should labour, apparently so 
studiously, to thrust unnecessary obstacles in the way of their readers, 
unless it be for the purpose of weeding out all but the most robust 
intellects, and illustrating their idea of the doctrine of survival. Love 
of science even in its lighter aspects cannot be regarded as the evidence of 
a frivolous mind, and therefore demands from the teacher a condescension 
to the greatest simplicity consistent with exactness. With knowledge, 
as in the case of wealth, the object should be to secure a wide and 
equable diffusion, and not to seek to create monsters and prodigies living 
in an empyrean of their own and having no social or intellectual contact 
with their fellows. As a specimen of the attractive style in which this 
work is written we extract from it the opening paragraphs :— 
“ Some years ago I rambled over the mountain district of North 
Italy in the lovely month of May. In a small sequestered valley, the 
slopes of which were densely clad with mighty Oaks and tall shrubs, I 
found the Flora developed in all its beauty. There in full bloom, was 
the Laburnum and Manna Ash, besides Broom and Sweet Briar, and 
countless smaller shrubs and Grasses. From every bush came the song 
of the nightingale ; and the whole glorious perfection of a southern 
spring morning filled me with delight. Speaking, as we rested, to my 
guide, an Italian peasant, I expressed the pleasure I experienced in this 
wealth of Laburnum blossoms and chorus of nightingales. Imagine the 
rude shock to my feelings on his replying briefly that the reason why 
the Laburnum was so luxuriant was that its foliage was poisonous, and 
goats did not eat it; and that though no doubt there were plenty of 
nightingales, there were scarcely any hares left For him, and I dare¬ 
say for thousands of others, this valley clothed with flowers was 
nothing more than a pasture ground, and nightingales were merely 
things to be shot. 
“ This little occurrence, however, seems to me characteristic of the 
way in which the great majority of people look upon the world of plants 
and animals. To their minds animals are game, trees are timber and 
firewood, herbs are vegetables (in the limited sense), or perhaps 
medicine or provender for domestic animals, whilst flowers are pretty 
for decoration. Turn in what direction I would, in every country where 
I have travelled for botanical purposes, the questions asked by the 
inhabitants were always the came. Everywhere I had to explain 
whether the plants I sought and gathered were poisonous or not; 
whether they were efficacious as cures for this or that illness ; and by 
what signs the medicinal or otherwise useful plants were to be recog¬ 
nised and distinguished from the rest. And the attitude of the great 
mass of country folk in times past was the same as at the present day. 
Ail along anxiety for a livelihood, the need of the individual to satisfy 
his own hunger, the interests of the family, the provision of food for 
domestic animals, have been the factors that have first led men to 
classify plants into the nutritious and the poisonous, into those that are 
pleasant to the taste and those that are unpleasant, and have induced 
them to make attempts at cultivation, and to observe the various pheno¬ 
mena of plant life. 
“ No less powerful as an incentive to the study of herbs, roots, and 
seeds, and to the minute comparison of similar forms and the deter- 
, mination of their differences, was the hope and belief that the higher 
powers had endowed particular plants with healing properties. In 
ancient Greece there was a special guild, the ‘ Rhizotomoi,’ whose 
members collected and prepared such roots and herbs as were considered 
to be curative, and either sold them themselves or caused them to be 
sold by apothecaries. Through the labours of these Rhizotomoi, added 
to those of Greek, Roman, and Arabic physicians, and of gardeners. 
Vine growers, and farmers, a mass of information concerning the 
plant world was acquired, which for a long period stood as botanical 
science. 
“ As late as the sixteenth century plants were looked upon from a 
purely utilitarian point of view, not only by the masses but also by very 
many professed scholars ; and in most of the books of that time we find 
the medicinal properties, and the general utility of the plants selected 
for description and discrimination, occupying a conspicuous position and 
treated in an exhaustive manner. Just as men lived in the firm belief 
that human destinies depended upon the stars, so they clung to the 
notion that everything upon the earth was created for the sake of man¬ 
kind ; and, in particular, that in every plant there were forces lying 
dormant, which, if liberated, would conduce either to the welfare or to 
the injury of man. Points which might serve as bases for the discovery 
of these secrets of Nature were eagerly sought for. 
“ People imagined they discerned magic in many plants, and even 
believed that they were able to trace in the resemblance of certain 
leaves, flowers, and fruits to parts of the human body, an indication, 
emanating from supernatural powers, of the manner in which the organ 
in question was intended to affect the human constitution. The 
similarity in shape between a particular foliage-leaf and the liver did 
duty for a sign that the leaf was capable of successful application in 
cases of hepatic disease, and the fact of a blossom being heart-shaped 
must mean that it would cure cardiac complaints. Thus arose the 
so-called doctrine of Signatures, which, brought to its highest develop¬ 
ment by the Swiss alchemist Bombastus Paracelsus (1493-1541), played 
a great part in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and still 
survives at the present day in the mania for nostrums. 
“ The inclination of the masses is now, as it was centuries ago, in 
favour of supernatural and mysterious rather than simple and natural 
interpretations ; and a Bombastus Paracelsus would still find no lack of 
credulous followers. In truth, the great bulk of mankind regaid botany 
