Febiiuary 1:2, 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
347 
put togetlier, tlie necessity of beiiif^ turned out of this 
beautiful garden ; but, in liis opinion, there was no 
liolp for it; the Council said so, and, of course, tliey 
ought to know best; and tliere was notliing for it now 
but to split the garden from the London branch, just as 
tlie Council advise in their rejjort. This resolution was 
seconded by the Hon. IF. J. iStranr/acaiis, who is a great 
gardener and practical botanist, and, of course, was as 
sorry as the rest of us for this turn out. 
Mr. Godson, Q.G., rose to propose an amendment to 
tliis resolution in a long, bantering speech, but be mer¬ 
cifully abstained from ])ersonalities, and all angry-like 
insinuations. Pfe began, by wondering that the noble 
earl, or the honourable council, know no more of gar¬ 
dening than to split a tree down through the middle, 
and to cast away, perhaps, tlie best half of it, in their 
attempts at renovation. Pie said he was not much of a 
gardener; how could he, with the bar always in his way? 
but he had sanguine hojies of curing this tree, sooner 
or later, if we would but give him his own way; not by 
splitting down the middle, but by grafting young scions 
here and tliere, that is, on the London half and on the 
i half at Chiswick, “ by lopping off”— {hear, hear )—an 
awkward bough here, or a stubborn bough there, which 
would not yield to be trained otherwise tlian as natural 
to it; by rooting up all suckers from the bottom, by 
foreshortening the strong rampant shoots in suinmei-, 
and by giving all due encouragement to the younger 
s}iray ; in short, he would renovate this tree “ on scien¬ 
tific principles,” providing wo would allow him so many 
hands to carry on the work. “Give liiin bat nine tho¬ 
rough good gardeners for this work, men who are accus¬ 
tomed to rough it out in all weathers,” he would measure 
out the work for them, show them where tlie Council 
did what they ought not to have done, and left out ar¬ 
rears which tliey ought to have gathered in before it was 
too late. Here Col. Clialloner looked very hard at the 
]Juke of Northumberland, and Mr. llutt looked hard at 
the gallant colonel—the three are on the Council—but 
IMr. Godson went on and on, fumbling among his papers 
all the time, like most lawyers. On drawing himself up 
for another effort, there was a pause, and the Guho of 
Northumberland rose with such a good-humoured smile, 
and complimented the lawyer on his jiractical knowledge 
of gardening, and his skill in imparting his enthusiasm 
to the meeting, that his grace would be most happy to 
make room for the nine assistant gardeners on the 
Council. No; but that was too much good nature on 
the part of his grace, who, in his turn, would be sure to 
spread the contagion of his own good intentions and 
noble qualities among the assistants, that the chances 
were they would be so good-natured at last, as would 
unfit them for such rough work as trenching, or retrench¬ 
ing, a whole garden !! 
When the amendment for a Select Committee of nine 
was about being put from the chair, Plarl Grey yielded. 
His practised eye could see how the wind blew; and he 
declined to test the strength of the Council by a “ divi¬ 
sion;” therefore Mr. Godson’s amendment was carried, 
and there were no objections offered to any one of the 
nine who were elected for a Committee of inquiry into 
the practicability of carrying on tbc garden. The Com¬ 
mittee are to have their report ready by the lllh of 
March ; and this meeting was adjourned till then. 
The whole went off in perfect good humour. There 
was a good deal of talk, however, il/r. Charlwood came 
forward, and told the Council that Nemesis has come at 
last, as he often foretold them she would ; but who 
would have thought of retaliation on ])ancake-day ? 
Mr. Bohn spoke tw’O or three times in favour of retain¬ 
ing the garden, and almost hinted, each time, how much 
better it wmtild be to put our hands into our pockets, 
I and pay off’the debt at once, than to lose the finest gar- 
; den, or, at least, the finest orchard, in Europe. Mr. 
Siricliland spoke nearly to the same effect, and said that 
such of the Eellows as lived far off’in the country, like 
him, had no ])leasure in pop-shows in London ; but a 
visit to the garden w'as alw'ays gratifying and instruc¬ 
tive ; and Mr. Bede, the great llorist, having thought 
that he, or we, were cliallenged, by one of the Council, to 
prove the least partiality, on their part, in the distribu¬ 
tion of rare plants, got up like a man of business, and 
told them fearlessly that their partiality was as notorious 
as their want of judgment, without any- circumlocution. 
He instanced some Pludxtnoj'iscs, which he said were in 
the hands of favourites long before their ne.vt-door 
nciglibours had heard of them from the Society. 'There¬ 
fore, to give him an opportunity of proving this state¬ 
ment, both sides pressed him much to be one of the 
Select Committee, which, however, he declined, for want 
of time. Several others declined on the same grounds. 
At hist the following wore appointed ; Mr. Godson, who 
will be the Chairman, no doubt, the Rev. H. IJareourt, 
Mr. Bohn, Mr. Osburn, Mr. i^eitdi, jun., Mr. Good, 
Mr. Graij, Mr. /Simpson, and ilfr. Paul. 
'The meeting, on the whole, was well attended; and 
every branch of the craft was well re))resented. Say 
jiractical botany by Sir IF. llooher, Jdr. Royle, and 
Mr. Bentham ; floriculture by such pillars as Beck, 
Punier, and Hdwards; the nursery and seed trade by 
Charlwood, Henderson, Paul, and Rivers —as men bom 
in the nursery^, and kept tbere since tliey' were in 
long clothes; jiractical gardening by such names as 
Mac Arthur, Glendining, and Perguson, who went back 
to the nursery after they were full grown, with Beattie, 
Booth, and Beaton. 'The amateur class was very highly 
represented, and both Houses of Parliament the same. 
Altogether we mustered hard upon a hundred. One 
Duke, one Marquis, one Earl, two Lords (Downrs and 
Ilcliesteij, Sir P. Pole, Cajit. Clark, Mr. Leach, and 
those aforenamed, were all the familiar faces 1 noted 
down. 
Jn conclusion, I have been asked, here and in TjOu- 
dou, to give my oivn common-sense view of the affaii-s 
of the Society, and was told that morning—twice in 
Covent Garden and once in Mr. Stevens’s sale-rooms 
hard by—that the Council must be in “ a flat minority” 
on the case they made out; that their ideas rvcrc 
thought to be perfectly absurd by the practicals round 
London ; that the whole scheme was meant for one 
man’s interests; and that the Select Committee would 
opjiose that scheme. 
After hearing all this, and after knowing ns much 
about the doings of the Society as any gardener what¬ 
ever, and more than most of them, it strikes me as more 
honourable that I should not say a word on that head 
w'hilo the coroner’s inquest is sitting to see if the Society 
be dead or not; and it was for the same reason that I 
refused “ out and out” to be one of the jury. 
1). Pn.Vi'ON. 
Citi.'.iEAN Vj-'.aETAHi.ES. —“With rccsjicct to culinai'y 
vegetables, they ajqicar in general not to flourish oir the 
southern coast, 'i'hey are not so delicate as the different 
kinds of cabbage at homo. Sjiinach is very bad. 
liCttuce must be sown in autumn in order to have heads 
in the spring. Jf it be sown in Eebruary and March, 
it will spring up, but at the same time bear a stalk. 
Peas and beans only succeed in very moist situations, 
and artificial irrigation is of very little use. All the 
turnip family rise out of the ground, and only produce 
inconspicuous and generally w'oody roots. 'This is 
esjrecially the case with the carrot. In order that vege¬ 
tables should succeed, the earth must bo thorougly 
manured: according to IMi' Pibgner, it ought not to 
contain less than three pails of manure.” — {Koelis 
Odessa and the Giiinea.) 
