October 22 , 1885. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
355 
and not destroyed. Children learn to love flowers before they 
learn to understand evil. The country child's first toys are 
flowers, the town child’s chief wonderment outside his dingy 
surroundings of streets and paving stones are flowers. What a 
sign of a pure love and taste triumphant was that poor crippled 
child’s sick-room window, that had in it a Hyacinth blooming in 
an old blacking bottle. I think it was Charles Dickens who 
noticed this, and he knew the little watcher and sufferer needed 
no. more sweet comfort of flowers, because next spring the 
child’s Hyacinth was not there. 
Well, my friends, the bond that draws us now together is 
that of an early implanted natural affection. This love of 
flowers is first pure then peaceable; let us keep it so, and then 
we shall not fail of all the good we seek. Each separate society 
in our Association does not lose its own identity, its own marked 
line of interest, its own particular colouring, by joining in one 
at this point, any more than do the side streams that here and 
there along the watercourse of a river join in on one common 
journey to the great sea lose their names and qualities where 
they are yet separate becks and rivulets. But, like as many 
tributaries make a river navigable at last, and of untold value 
not only to a district, but to a whole nation, so do we hope that 
the Yorkshire Association, which, riverlike, gathers from the 
wide horticultural area of the grand county of which we York- 
shiremen are so proud, may bring and carry forth results that 
shall be marked, and broad and valuable to the whole pursuit 
and science of floriculture. 
To change the figure, and speaking, of course, still figura¬ 
tively, we shall keep one another warm, brace each other up, 
help and expand each other’s views. This nearer view will make 
us look more narrowly at one another, and we shall find our 
brethren not so narrow as perhaps we thought. If other of the 
societies that become kin to-day are like the Paxton Society of 
Wakefield, then the florist element will be appreciable. I sup¬ 
pose I may say it is a rare, I am sure I may say it is a useful 
element; I hope it will increase. I daresay I am put down as a 
specialist and an extremist, and so I may as well say that the 
florist element cannot be overdone; I believe its essence really 
pervades and influences further and wider than is thought. One 
truth our horticultural brethren will learn from us florists is 
this, that the love and intimate observation which the culture 
of florists’ flowers beget, do not restrict and blunt floral 
sympathies, but enlarge them. It is just those who go most 
minutely and strictly into any pursuit or science who have large 
heart and eye for all. Such devotion is expansive. I have never 
met any who loved a wild flower so well as brother florists, never 
any who had a fuller appreciation of all than those who were 
supposed to care for only one or more strict florist’s flowers. 
I hope many florists will join this Association, and that many 
others who have joined will become florists. I hope that every 
wholesome leaven brought in may work throughout the whole ; 
and, speaking of my brother florists, I think I may say that the 
general body will find that the particular men the florist speci¬ 
alists have so large sympathy with all floriculture, that they 
gladly join this Association through its tributary branches, as a 
welcome means of letting their whole heart go free. None of 
us can go beyond our opportunities, few of us can find that our 
means and opportunities are equal to the breadth of our desires, 
the depth of our floral love, the height of our aspirations. 
Where we cannot have full scope for these implanted and 
aroused instincts, what so near and cheering as the advantages 
of such an Asssociation as this ? The very objects of it speak 
of the wealth we can enjoy in common, the good which we can 
give and take, according to the varied store in our different 
treasuries of literature, knowledge, and experience. If we could 
say that we felt no interest in the objects of our united action as 
laid before us now, it would be saying we did not value the 
science of our art, and were content to be more or less solitary 
and shallow pursuers of it, each one buying bis own experience 
and selling it not. 
But where knowledge is wide standards are high, and success 
is greater in the sense of being more highly prized, but I can 
remember the time when a secret was the supposed way of 
success. The time, use, and fruition of knowledge, which is the 
imparting of it, was not always understood and felt. Now we 
walk in a fairer truer light, and the endeavour, one with another, 
is to see not how little we have to learn, and how little we need 
impart, but how much and how thoroughly. 
Of course, exhibitions are instructive; there we see plants 
and flowers and fruits in such calm and finished perfection, that 
they seem to have known nothing of the roughness, suffering, 
and sorrow in which the whole creation, alike of things that feel 
and things that cannot, groan together in this sad world, and 
we know that the competition is a sharp spur to effort, and 
where competition is healthy and fair it is a life-giving stimulus. 
But something more besides these contests is required to bring 
the full life into play, something more than conquests won and 
disappointments borne with silent grace and fortitude, and one 
thing more is this broad, brave, and helpful fellowship of friends 
and fellow labourers. I think our Association is meant to be, and 
will prove to be, a vital organ of the body floricultural. 
If flower shows are the outward features, so fair and varied in 
their beauty that they seem like something belonging to that 
old first garden, of which but the name remains to us now, then 
this new community in which we enrol ourselves will be the 
power and function that will send the pulse and glow of healthy 
life throughout. I think I am not too sanguine in anticipating 
and hoping and prophesying this. I at least take no credit to 
myself for far-sightedness. I do not consider that 1 am looking 
through spectacles rose-tinted by the warmth and enthusiasm of 
this day’s inauguration festival. No, I am looking with naked 
eye, and 1 think yours will be as single as mine- 
The time has gone by for regarding a brother horticulturist 
merely as somebody set up to be bowled over at a show, and 
all the better victim for being as raw and unenlightened and 
unhelped as possible. What I may call the cold heartless competi¬ 
tions of shows is passing away, or is gone. We meet at many 
by times, and have wayside intercourse. Men of a fancy, a taste, 
a pursuit of recreation, are not content to meet as strangers, and 
as strangers part, they know there is always something valu¬ 
able in that which helps to an interchange of knowledge, and 
which gives a body of men coherence, that will be the province 
of our united horticultural forces. If the example is new, let us 
keep it good and true, and then the spread of it will be one 
more bright feature in the prospects of horticulture. 
(To be continued.) 
NOTES ON GRAPES. 
Trentham Black. —This may be seen in the early house at 
Wrotham Park in company with Black Hamburgh and Black Prince. 
The bunches are late in showing and are not very handsome at any 
period of growth. The berries set somewhat irregularly, but with 
careful thinning a fairly good-looking bunch can be grown. The 
shape of berry (if my memory serves me right) resembles Black Prince. 
It is a good grower, assumes a beautiful colour, and in flavour it is first 
rate. 
Madresfield Court.— This is a grand Grape, and I am glad to 
say I have found out the way to grow it. Seven years ago I lifted 
a seven-year-old Vine out of the late house and put it at the warmest 
end of the second house, and so pleased are my employers with it 
that I am instructed to plant more of it in preference to Black Ham¬ 
burgh. I keep the top ventilators open a little at all times, and also 
in front when the berries are swelling, and have no trouble to finish 
it without cracking. The only fault 1 find is that it does not keep so 
well as Mrs. Pince, Alicante, and Lady Downes.—G. Merritt. 
John Downie. —J had a young Vine for trial from Mr. Downie 
of the Vine bearing his name, with the view of proving its worth 
and its distinctive character. It was planted in a house to be used 
chiefly for the growth of Muscats along with a few other black sorts. 
Within a year or so, as is my usual practice, I took from five to ten 
bunches from each supernumerary Vine. John Downie and Alnwick 
Seedling appeared to be identical in appearance of foliage, wood, 
strength of growth, appearance of fruit, and flavour. This year 
(being their second season of fruiting) I can discover no difference 
between them. Mentioning the fact to Mr. Downie when he paid a 
visit here last summer, he stated that he believes a mistake has 
occurred in sending out this Vine, as the original variety seemed 
much more like Gros Colman than Alnwick Seedling, and so I think, 
judging from samples of each which I saw exhibited together.—M. 
Temple, Carron Hou e 
JUDGES AND THEIR WORK. 
It would seem from the remarks of “ A Kitchen Gardener,” page 203, 
that judges are not much better chosen in his district than in this, and I 
am sorry to say there are other places where similar blunders are con¬ 
tinually being made. 
In the county town here (Midland) there are five shows held during 
the year, which are well patronised by the public, yet there are but few 
examples worth going to see, as many of the best exhibitors do not show 
now. There are four judges, who are nearly always chosen for each of 
these shows ; one is superintendent of the cemetry, another of the public 
park, another is a florist, and the other is a clergyman who grows Roses 
and Pansies well, but never attempts to grow anything else. 
What practical gardener would exhibit fruit and vegetables there and 
expect justice? Why are they chosen? Because they are each well 
