April 14, 1887. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
293 
1)/ I’axton and Harrison, and began in 1832, extended to six volumes 
only, and “ The Floricultural Magazine,” by Robert Mamock in 1836 to 
a like number. “The Magazine of Botany,” by Paxton, begun in 1834, 
had a longer and more successful run, extending to fifteen volumes, and 
these have been re-edited and republished recently. George Glenny, 
for some time editor of “ The Gardeners’ Gazette” and “The Horti¬ 
cultural Journal,” and author of many treatises and papers on florist’s 
flowers, was a clear and forcible writer, and helped much to popularise 
that particular branch of the art. The “ Pomological Magazine” begun 
in 1827, is now usually met with in three volumes, and contains coloured 
plates and descriptions of many of our best fruits. 
“The Florist,” commenced by Edward Beck in 1848, closed in 1882. 
As 1 was for sometime part proprietor of this periodical I will only say 
that contributions to its pages were made by some of our soundest and 
best writers on gardening, and the illustrations of fruits and flowers 
were generally acknowledged to be faithful representations creditably 
executed. Works of this period entitled to high commendation are 
Johnson’s “History of Gardening” (1829), McIntosh’s “Practical 
Gardener” (1828), McIntosh’s “The Book of the Garden” (1853), 
Thompson’s “ Gardener’s Assistant ” (1859). 
Mr. W, Paul "then referred to the establishment of the horticultural 
fruits who has evolved our delicious eating and culinary Apples from 
the wild Crab of the hedgerows, and improved so many other fruits and 
vegetables? and among flowers only consider the increase in size and 
beauty of our Roses, Pansies, Hollyhocks, and others, when measured 
a ainst the wild forms from which they are descended. The value of 
these acquisitions will be best appreciated by imagining the blanks that 
would be created by their withdrawal from our hearths and homes. 
Now it. must be admitted that these improved Roses are the work of the 
gardener, and if their value be fairly and impartially estimated, I think 
none will deny that he has reason to rejoice over the fruits of his labour. 
I claim for him no creative power, but merely the intelligent use of the 
powers given to him by his Creator, whereby he exercises a dominion, 
more or less complete, over all created things. 
In the progress of which we have spoken, we find evidence which we 
cannot ignore, that gardening, viewed either as an art or a science, is 
capable of indefinite extension and improvement; while he who labours 
in this field cannot but be alive to this important fact, the mere on-looker 
has not hitherto fairly and fully recognised it. But as alchemy was the. 
forerunner of chemistry, and astrology of astromony, so surely will the 
practical gardening of the past and present ages result in a grand future 
of horticulture. Thanks to the literature of gardening, there is already 
Fig. 52 —CYPRIPED1UM HIRSUTI3SIMUM. 
papers, and after giving a long list of works by recent and living authors 
he concluded hi* lecture in these terms :— 
We have seen that the literature of gardening commences with the 
earliest historic period. The work goes on through Jews, Assyrians, 
Persians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans to the fall of the Roman 
empire, the beautiful as well as the useful attracting the notice of 
these several people. On the revival of learning in the Middle Ages the 
Italians and Dutch are the earliest in the field, and are followed by 
other nations—the gardener, the herbalist, the botanist, sometimes 
working on their own individual lines, and sometimes on mixed lines, 
succeed in due order. Finally gardening and botany separate so far as 
literature is concerned, although the gardener then, and more than ever 
now, furnishes the physiological botanist with facts, while the botanist 
renders the gardener essential service by his labours in the fields of 
systematic and physiological botany. The botanist’s figures and de- 
criptions of Nature’s plants, and above all his discoveries and publi¬ 
cation of the facts of vegetable anatomy, disclose to the view of the 
gardener new fields for the exercise of his industry and skill, which he 
joyously avails himself of, and the surface of the earth grows more pro¬ 
ductive and more beautiful by the successive uprising of new forms and 
tints. While claiming for the gardener the larger share in this work of 
progress, I have no wish to depreciate the labours of the botanist, or 
the flowers of Nature—the botanist’s flowers. 1 admire their simple 
beauty. 1 have often paused in wonder at their adaptability to the 
situations they naturally affect. I have revelled amid their pleasant 
and fascinating associations. But as a gardener I am now looking at 
the question from the gardener’s point of view. Amongst vegetables, 
who has devclo|>ed our present valuable forms of the Potato from the 
small and unpalatable tuber introduced from South America 1 Among 
at hand a vast chaos of unarranged facts, which only require assorting 
and systematising to form a solid structure of correct proportions and 
rare beauty. It is not the materials, but the workman—a horticultural 
Davy or Newton—that is wanted. 
SILICA IN SOILS. 
Mr. Abbey in an article on soils (page 255), in which he gives much 
valuable advice, says, amongst other things, that it is advisable to apply 
farmyard manure to loam and clay soils, but he assigns a very peculiar 
reason for so doing, and that is—because such manures contain silica. 
Further on, in the same paragraph, he states that. “ silicates being 
deficient [in loam and clay] that [farmyard] manures are very 
valuable.” . , 
I do not wish Mr. Abbey to think that I am anxious to pick holes in 
what he says—after all it is only a question of theory—but I think he 
is wrong about the silica. 
Dr. Voelcker’s evidence. Three analyses of soils from clay pastures, 
by this eminent authority, give respectively seventy-two, sixty-nine, 
and seventy-seven per cent, of silica ; and further, referring to gram 
crops, and I know no other crops that contain such a quantity of silica 
as these, he sajs, “Nearly two-thirds of the total amount of mineral 
matter in the grain and straw of Wheat consist of silica, of which there 
is an ample supply in almost every soil. The restoration of silica need 
not trouble us, as there is not a single instance on record of silica, even 
in a soluble form, being applied to the land with the slightest advantage 
to Wheat crops.” ,. , . 
Now what does Johnston, edited by Yoelckcr, the two edited by 
Cameron, say 1 “ Silica is abundant in all soils.' Three analyses of soils 
