1876.] 
NATIONAL CARNATION AND PIOOTEE SOCIETY. 
211 
the competition ; and their productions, amounting in the aggregate to upwards 
of 1,000 blooms, including thirty-two collections of twelves and twelve of sixes, 
taxed the energies of the judges to the utmost. Indeed, it is necessary to say, 
that in the limited time at their command before the admission of the public, 
after which, judging—in the only way it should be performed, by selection and 
comparison—became an impossibility, it taxed the energies of the judges beyond 
their powers; and therefore on this point we hope there will be a careful revision 
of the arrangements before another year comes round. On some other points we 
believe an alteration in the terms of competition is desirable; for instance, that 
the six-blooms class shall be confined to growers of limited stocks. The absurd 
regulation limiting a variety to win once only in the single-bloom classes, save 
only the variety winning the first prize, which is allowed to win a second time 
—a regulation which opens the door to many forms of evil, without, in the 
experience of the writer, one advantage—should be utterly abolished. 
At some future opportunity, when space may permit, we hope to return to 
this subject, and also to sketch some other arrangements, which we think will 
be advantageous to the Society, the exhibitor, and the public. Meantime, it 
was a great gratification to observe that the comments made on the subject of 
arrangement, as exemplified by the exhibition of last year, had been well weighed 
by the exhibitors, and their exhibits greatly improved. This subject—the 
method of arrangement—is one the would-be high-class exhibitor cannot possibly 
pass over, and will be found most interesting in its study, as, though governed 
by fixed and well-defined principles, it is as wide in its application as the limitless 
variety of Nature herself. 
The distribution of fourteen First-class Certificates, the certificate representing 
the highest class of excellence known to the distributors, may seem to some to 
imply a profuse liberality unexampled on the part of the judges ; but on this 
point the writer desires only to say, if any error was made, it was in withholding, 
not in awarding, certificates ; for, but for the fact that the excessive heat had 
caused several fine varieties to “ veil ” their beauties, unquestionably some of the 
others exhibited must have had similar honours. At a later day we hope to give 
descriptions of the varieties certificated, with some others of which we have 
notes, at a length their quality and importance demand, but which space now 
forbids. Meantime, it is a noteworthy fact, as an illustration of the eligibility 
of these lovely flowers, and their claim to an extended cultivation, that each of 
the principal prize-winning collections came from the neighbourhood of a large 
town, where cultivation as a rule is pursued under the greatest difficulties; 
whilst eleven of the fourteen First-class Certificates for new and distinct varieties 
went to Mr. B. Simonite, of Sheffield, whose little plot, which ‘‘ forty years ago 
was a wild, windy, bony strip, on a bleak hill-side, and which stands now the 
dingiest, most smoke-afflicted, frost-bitten, furnace-blasted, storm-stricken plot 
that ever went by the sweet name of ‘ garden,’ ” has been immortalised by Mr. 
Horner in his description of the Sheffield seedlings. 
T 2 
