130 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
November 27. 
made censors, and the prospectus reprinted with their 
names;—some of them serving both as committee-men 
aud censors, account for there appearing more than we 
said there were. Many of these names were highly 
respectable, though their owners were perfectly innocent 
of any knowledge of the affairs. By degrees all the 
offices became filled, and we have no less, at last, than 
twenty-four dealers and fifteen other persons on the 
committee, and nineteen dealers and thirteen other 
persons made censors, more than one-lialf of whom are 
perfectly incompetent to fulfil the duties of a judge ; and 
if it be disputed, we hold the most unanswerable proof 
of their incompetency; but they are all capable of 
voting certificates for each other. The censors are paid ; 
it serves for a kind of patronage. A certain number are 
invited every meeting-day to come, and if a country 
censor wants to come to town it is handy to be paid the 
expenses of his journey. Mr. Holland was brought up 
from Manchester to judge one Auricula, the whole 
stock of which was not worth the cost of his journey, 
although there were half-a-score persons in the metro¬ 
polis equally capable. Mr. Cole, a gardener at 
Birmingham, has also been invited more than once; 
aud although the subscription is most extravagant for 
a society which gives no prizes, it will be found 
that the money received has been pretty well 
disposed of. Many, however, consider that there has 
never been a general meeting to elect all the officers, as 
there should have been; and that all the distant mem¬ 
bers are precluded from voting by ballot, therefore that 
they would be merely finding funds for the few members 
who live on the spot to play with. More than one 
hundred persons’names have been given, whose distant 
residences render their attendance impossible; and we 
hear from many that they were deceived as to the 
character of the society. Of the committee, no less than 
seventeen are too distant to attend, unless they have 
something to show, and then distance is not considered. 
The following are the only ones within six or eight 
miles :—Messrs. Ayres, Beck, Davidson, Fairburn, Firth, 
Gaines, Glendinning, Gray, Groom, Henderson, Lee, 
Lidgard, Lockner, Newhall, Pearson, Proctor, Rowland, 
Salter, aud Staines; Bragg and Turner have twenty 
miles to come, and therefore come when they have any 
thing to show. These gentlemen, not one-half of whom 
do attend, have the spending of all the guineas, and 
paying all the censors; they invite whom they please, 
and it must not be lost sight of that eleven members of 
the committee, who pay the censors and invite them, 
are themselves censors. 
Tho question is, how does the society work? By 
attending the meetings when the productions of the 
whole floral world are to be sent for a character, 
we have found a number of old plants and flowers 
mixed among a few new ones, a dozen to twenty 
persons, chiefly those who were censors, members of the 
committee, who have brought something to be judged ; 
the chairman reads what awards have been made, and 
| all is over. None of the public, at least worth mention¬ 
ing, come near the place, and an hour after the report 
is read, the room is deserted. But this is not the principal 
object; how do the awards work? What confidence 
can the public have in them? The general value of 
these awards may be guessed at, when we inform our 
readers that they have given each other very nearly a 
hundred recommendations, and nearly all of them among 
the committee, censors, and other officers: Fifteen for 
Cinerarias , and Twenty-five for Pelargoniums. The 
Antirrhinum, which, so far as we have yet gone, remains 
a worthless weed, has been honoured by a first-class 
certificate, but it belonged to the secretary. Five Gla¬ 
dioluses have been awarded favours, but they belonged 
to one or other of the censors. We do not mention 
these facts to imply favouritism, but to show the perfect 
anomaly of the constitution, and to point out that the 
only use of a test is to protect the public; while here 
it must be clear to everybody, that their interest is 
exactly opposed to the interests of the owners of flowers, 
The public are interested in knowing as few as may be. 
and all really advances on what we already possess; 
while the raisers, of which the executive is chiefly com¬ 
posed, are interested in commending as many as pos¬ 
sible. 
We anticipate that it is morally impossible to 
get all this year’s subscriptions in, and that there will 
not he half so many got in next year. We have con¬ 
versed with many persons who sent their names under 
an impression that the Society was very differently 
composed, and we invite the committee to publish a 
list of all the certificates and commendations awarded, 
and to whom, and to place against each name the office 
he holds in the Society, whether president, committee¬ 
man, censor, or merely member.* We are not in the 
habit of flattering raisers of flowers; and it is no un¬ 
common thing for us to find varieties, which we have 
condemned, sent to the National, and obtain their 
honours. When we say the executive of the National 
have praised and honoured nearly a hundred different 
subjects belonging to either their own committee or 
censors, we only speak of what they did up to Septem¬ 
ber ; what they have done since, will form the subject 
of another notice. We saw now aud then novelties, 
infinitely better than they rewarded, go without any 
notice whatever, and many things not so good as we 
possess already, rewarded with their approval. 
But, we may be asked, what ought to be done? To 
which we answer—Everyman ought to vote by ballot for 
the election of officers, and particularly for judges. The 
names of candidates should be received up to a given 
day ; the list printed, and sent to all the members, who 
should mark against those they vote for, and send their 
papers through proxies of their own appointment. The 
judges should be independent, and a limited number,—■ 
five, or seven at the most; and certainly not dealers. 
If they are to be paid, pay them as directors of public 
companies are paid, and let the sum for all be paid 
among such as attend; three being a quorum. In such 
case, the best men will be chosen, and they would have 
a character to lose. Let it be a post of honour, such as 
good men may be proud of, and let every one be allowed 
to address the subscribers, stating their pretensions. 
Let them be men who understand all things, not the 
mere grower of one or two subjects. We should be 
sorry to see the strength of the National Society dis¬ 
persed again, but better this than it should proceed as 
at present constituted. We, so far as we are personally 
concerned, would much rather take an individual opi¬ 
nion than that of the present Society. The fact of a 
committee having the power to call in and pay whom 
they like of thirty-two persons published as censors, 
and a great portion of the thirty-two themselves serving 
in the double capacity , must shake public confidence. 
Cockscomb (E. B .).—A monster certainly, but they 
can be grown quite as large from cuttings. As soon as 
a plant shows the flower let the six upper leaves form 
the plant, cut two inches below them, strip off all but 
the six, pot singly in 60 -sized pots (three inches 
diameter), plunge them in good bottom heat, -water well, 
and cover with a hand glass. They will make good root 
immediately, and as soon as the fibres reach the sides 
shift to larger pots continually, using rich soil, say peat, 
rotted turfs, and dung from a melon bed. Plenty of 
heat, light, and moisture, by keeping them near the 
glass in a good hot-bed, will complete their growth to an 
* Such a list has just been published, and is called Transactions of the 
National Floricultural Society. Can an instance be quoted when the 
Society gave a certificate to an inferior flower, when a superior was 
present ?—Ed. C. G. 
