393 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ November 5, 1885. 
rather a shy bearer : with us, however, it is very free, and regarded as 
second only to Sea Eagle. 
Late Admirable.—A very useful variety, of good size and fair flavour, 
but scarcely worth growing beside those previously named. The same 
remark is applicable to Prin’e and Princess of Wales and Lord Palmer¬ 
ston ; still they are excellent for kitchen purposes. 
Salwey.—This is the latest Peach of all. coming into use at the end 
of October and beginning of November. The fruit when well grown has 
certainly a grand and imposing appearance, and if ripened under favour¬ 
able conditions the flavour is excellent ; it cannot, however, at all times 
be depended upon.—H. J. H. 
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE YORKSHIRE 
ASSOCIATION OF HORTICULTURISTS. 
ADDRESS BY THE REY E. D. HORNER. 
[At the last annual meeting of the above Association, held at the 
rooms of the Paxton Society, Wakefield, the Rev. F. D. Horner delivered an 
interesting address upon the general objects of the Association, and this 
was supplemented by a lecture on the Auricula. We have been favoured 
with the MSS. of both these, and as they are of far more than local interest 
we present them to our readers. ] 
(Continved from page 382.) 
If I may without tediousness pass on now to speak of the 
Auricula from a florist’s point of view, I cannot better lay the 
subject before you in the abstract than by reproducing the words 
of a brother florist, Rev. F. Tvmons, who says, “ The points of a 
good flower are not arbitrary, as the uninitiated sometimes say, 
but really appeal to rules of beauty recognised and allowed by 
all who have made a study of the flower. Thus, as in other 
matters of beauty and taste, the verdict of those most skilled in 
the subject is that which is entitled to weight. Rigid attendance 
to these points is of proportionate importance in any flower which 
is largely the creation of skill stretching forward to some ideal 
standard. 
“ Capability of modification under culture so as to draw nearer 
and nearer to that standard, is one of the prime distinctions of 
florists’ flowers. Among these, none probably are more our 
creation than the Auricula. Hence the importance of a thorough 
knowledge of what a flower ought to be.” Nature suggests, and 
leaves us to work out with her those suggestions. Hence when 
we find the Picotee gifted with the property of a beautiful wire 
edge of some soft tint upon its white petal, we at once see that 
that wire edge must be more perfect upon a smooth-edged petal 
than a jagged or fimbriated one. So of the Pink in the smooth 
petal that most sets off its lacing. Where the Auricula displays 
rings of colour on its flower disc in many velvet and enamelled 
textures, we see at once the full circular shape is better than the 
wingy windmill style of petal that cuts the zones in gaps and 
lets daylight spaces into the beautiful design. 
In fact, whatever a man may be as an uninitiated and outside 
objector, he becomes what florists are if it is vouchsafed to him 
afterwards to become a florist. 
. Florist Auriculas are divided first into two broadly distin¬ 
guished groups—the edged flowers and the Alpines. The mam 
lines of separation here are the unmealed centres and shaded 
petals of the Alpine classes. In the edged Auricula the centres 
are all densely mealed, and each colour is of one uniform unshaded 
kind. The highest type in the Alpine (this term is technical here, 
and not to be confounded with the botanical use of the word 
alpine) is the golden centre and heavily shaded petal; the paler 
the centre and the mss the shading the weaker is the flower in its 
properties. This section is the hardiest and most prolific of all 
Auriculas, and those that are generally grown in garden borders 
are rTn^ neS more ^ ess w atery blood and inferior strain. 
The other group is the Auricula Royal, containing all the 
edged classes Tvkicli constitute tlie highest and most wonderful 
development of the flower. In these all the play of the flower in 
variety of colouring lies in the two outer rings or zones known 
as the edge and body colour; the two inner, the circle of the 
mealy paste, and the tube are constant in all. The paste ouaflit 
always to be a dense smooth circle of white meal, and the tube a 
golden centre, prettily fringed with the gold-dusted anthers at 
its mouth. The stigma in Auriculas of each group and in every 
class must be below the anthers and almost sessile on the ovary, 
or it is the pin eye, which is a disqualification, as giving the tube 
and the whole flower a hard stony vacant look, for the mossy 
anthers in this case are always sunk to the bottom of the tube. 
The green edges are accounted the highest rank of all. They 
are the most difficult to obtain at all, and are rarely, even yet, 
obtained good They have the richest play of contrast in their 
colours. An edge of pure emerald green outside a zone of black 
velvet, and that again succeeded by a circle of snowy meal with 
enamelled throat or tube of gold, is a flower of wondrous and 
rare tyje of beauty truly. 
The green edges are the only class in which a mealy habit of 
foliage never occurs. The contrast of their zones of emerald 
black and white in a setting of silver leaves would be very 
beautiful, but Nature denies this combination, though often 
granting the converse in white edges with green foliage. The 
deposit of what we call meal upon the flower and its leaves is 
curious, and we may often have wondered what its nature is. 
The latest light I know of on that point is the interesting result 
of some carefully conducted chemical experiments that have been 
made by a brother florist, Mr. Worsley of Clifton. He has found 
this meal to be a vegetable oily or waxy substance, and is working 
this matter out further. There certainly appears on the thick 
green foliage of some varieties an oily deposit, and it is pungent 
to the lips, as you will find if you blow the water out that may 
have got into the heart of the plant, while a thin film of oily 
matter is sometimes seen on a wet leaf not exposed to washing 
by rain. It may be an abundant secretion of this matter that 
coagulates upon leaves of some varieties and gives them the 
snowy habit which we called mealed. The matter, however, is 
interesting, and I thought I would name it. The next class to 
green edges are the greys, in which a sprinkling of meal, like hoar 
frost upon grass, lies delicately over a green foundation without 
hiding it further than to give a pearly semi-transparent effect, as 
of a silver dew crystallised upon it. 
The class following are the white edges. It is very hard to 
say which is best where all are beautiful; but the white edges 
are the fairest to see. The white edge is the Auricula in her 
bridal dress. The whole face of the flower, except the one 
feature of the velvety body colour, is veiled in a fall of softest 
snowiest meal. Good true whites and good true green edges 
have been very few so far. 
Then follows that beautiful consort of the edged classes, the 
self. Really it is itself an edge, and used to be called self-edged, 
the space allotted to two zones of colour in other classes being 
here occupied by one in a double breadth, the colour being one 
rich tint from the edge of the paste to the rim of the petal. The 
self, with its mealed paste and colour of one decided hue, is a 
very different flower from the Alpine with its unmealed centre 
and heavily shaded colour, and not the least approach of the one 
to the distinct properties of the other can be tolerated. If an 
Auricula has one unshaded colour it should have white paste and 
be a self. If it has a well-shaded colour it should possess the 
golden unmealed centre and be an Alpine. Those are the differ¬ 
ences that form the class distinctions in the florist Auricula, and 
in all the colours should remain true and fast, not fading into 
sere or weaker shades. A good flower dies well. One word—as 
I have said in other remarks on our flower—one word may suffice 
to express the share which the flowers of all the classes should 
apportion to their zones, and that single word, is balance. The 
flower should be well balanced. 
In form, circular and flat; in substance, stout and lasting; in 
size, moderate, certainly not big, but moderate. In the currency 
of the Auricula we want no crown pieces and get no threepenny 
bits ; a pip the size of a shilling is small enough, and one like a 
florin is quite large enough. As a rule a flower suffers more 
by over size than under. It is soon coarse and rough in the 
grain. The Auricula is a jewel. It is one of the oldest of our 
exhibition florist flowers, for there were exhibitions of Auriculas 
in Lancashire more than 150 years ago. It was an English 
resident as far back as 1570, brought into the east and north¬ 
west of England by those Flemish weavers who brought to this 
country the craft of handloom weaving of woollens and with 
them these favourite home flowers. In 1725 we have proof that 
the culture of the Auricula was established in Lancashire. Fora 
period of some fifty years then no record of it exists, but in 1830 
the flower was grown abundantly in Lancashire districts; but 
independently of that, fifty years back from now almost 
every district in Yorkshire, Staffordshire, and Cheshire had its 
circle of Auricula growers. So too in Scotland and in the south 
of England. There were shows and societies in the home 
counties, and many growers in places which are now simply brick- 
and-mortar London. 
(To be continued.) 
FORCING SEAKALE. 
As the time has now arrived when choice vegetables are comparatively 
scarce in the outside garden, and gardeners not having proper accommo¬ 
dation for forcing will be studying how they can best supply the require¬ 
ments of the cook in the shape of delicate vegetables to fill the vacancies 
that have occurred through the loss of the crops of Peas, Beans, &c. 
Where a Mushroom house is in existence little difficulty will be expe¬ 
rienced in obtaining a supply of Seakale from November onwards. To 
secure this no time should be lost in taking up a number of roots (a cord¬ 
ing to the accommodation and requirements of the family) and place them 
