266 
THE FLOEIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ December, 
knowledge of this remedy to the suggestive and most admirable papers on the 
Auricula, by my esteemed friend, the Rev. F. D. Horner, who has laid his brother- 
florists, and plant cultivators generally, under great obligation by the excellent 
matter and most attractive manner of his essays ; and I desire here to record 
my indebtedness, as the least acknowledgment I, as one of many, can make for 
great gifts and talent freely placed at the general service. The application is, I 
believe, not new, but has followed the use of the Gishurst compound, also a 
most valuable aid in the destruction of parasitic life, but until I saw its use 
described by Mr. Horner it was new to me; and the results having been so satis¬ 
factory, I feel, although possibly some of my readers may say I am reciting an 
old tale, that I am bound to record it. 
The long-continued cold of May was followed by great heat in June, and 
after a slight intennission, by the greater heats of July, carrying the plants into 
bloom with a rapidity rarely paralleled. Naturally, where, as in my own case, 
no favouring foliage helped to tone the fiery rays of old Sol—where bricks and 
mortar, dry and dewless surroundings only existed, and despite every effort to inter¬ 
pose shade, the thermometer, from the 15 th to the 19 th of July, persistently recorded 
92° of heat—the growth of the flower could not be so fully developed as, with an 
atmosphere of 20° less in heat, it might have been ; yet, with all these drawbacks, 
and the difficulties I have before referred to, the bloom as a whole was^we, and 
this not in my case only, but in that of every cultivator I have the pleasure to 
know. This, I believe, was the opinion of my esteemed friends, Mr. Horner, 
Mr. Simonite, Mr. Lord, Mr. Rudd, and Mr. Bower, who, enduring the tenable 
ordeal of a long journey from Yorkshire on one of the hottest of these hot days, 
did me the great honour to pay me a visit for the bloom. To my regret, the 
necessary preparation for the all-important show of the 19th prevented my 
accompanying my friends in their visit to the collections at Loxford Hall, in the 
charge of Mr. Douglas, whose name is the synonym for first-class cultivation 
everywhere ; but the enthusiastic praise with which they returned, full-charged, 
was completely warranted by the superior specimens Mr. Douglas produced the 
next day. On the 20th, we journeyed in company to the Royal Nursery, Slough, 
and in addition to the creature comforts so hospitably dispensed by our esteemed 
friend, drank deeply of the delights those famous grounds are redolent of. 
Things “ of beauty,” joys “ for ever,” surrounded us, and they will remain 
enshrined in memory, whilst memory remains. 
I journeyed to Sheffield on August 7th, the Bank holiday, which I note only 
to remind my readers that the forges of Sheffield were on that day largely at 
rest. As I stood on the “ bleak hill-side ” of my friend’s garden, then under 
'the influence of a blinding, burning sun, I thought, had I to reply to a sceptic 
who decried the verities of floriculture, I would bring him here, and point him 
to the proofs of the “ faith and patience and long toil of years ” which lay before 
him as an all-sufficient answer. Of Mr. Simonite’s seedlings I have notes of thirty- 
seven varieties, ranging through each of the classes both of Carnations and Picotees, 
