44 
[April 24. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
a garden, together with the failure of the parliamentary grant, and the 
royal subscription, both of which the Society had been led to expect, but 
which it never received, added to some losses which it sustained a few 
years afterwards, gave a temporary check to its means ; but the active 
support of its many zealous friends enabled it to recover its position, 
without contracting for a moment the field of its usefulness, and long 
before his death, Mr. Knight could safely contemplate this Society as a 
permanent means of applying to the benefit of the community those 
physiological principles which he had laboured through life to establish. 
One of the earliest means adopted by the council for promoting the im¬ 
provement of horticulture, was the establishment of medals as a reward 
for merit; these were first given in the year 1808, and on the 1st of May, 
1814, the gold medal was voted by the Society to Mr. Knight, “ For his 
various and important communications to the Society, not only of papers 
printed in their Transactions, but of grafts and buds of his valuable new 
fruits.” A few years later, the council thought it desirable to establish a 
class of medals of a smaller size than the original ones ; and soon after 
the death of Sir Joseph Banks, in 1819, on carrying this resolution into 
effect, they embraced this opportunity of recording their sense of the 
benefits the Society had derived from his support and influence, by 
calling it the Banksian Medal, and nlacing Sir Joseph’s profile on the 
obverse of the medal. In the year 1835, in consequence of the extensive 
distribution of these medals, the dies had become worn out; at the same 
t ine, the encouragement to horticulturists which they had given had 
been so manifest, that it was determined to have three dies prepared by 
one of the first artists of this country. An emblematic representation of 
Flora, attended bv the four Seasons, was selected as the design for the 
large medal; the head of Sir Joseph Banks was again adopted for the 
smaller one ; and for the intermediate one, the council determined that 
no device could be more appropriate, and at the same time more accept¬ 
able to those whom it was intended to encourage, than a similar profile 
of Mr. Knight. The die of the Knightian medal was accordingly ex¬ 
ecuted, together with the two others, by Mr. Wyon, and was first dis¬ 
tributed to those to whom it had been awarded in the course of the year 
183/. At a meeting of the Society held on the 4th of May, 1836, it was 
resolved, “That the first impression of the Society’s new large medal be 
struck in gold, and presented to Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq., for the 
signal services he has rendered to horticulture by his physiological re¬ 
searches.” In the spring of 1809, Mr. Andrew Knight and his family 
quitted Elton, and removed to Downton Castle, which Mr. Payne Knight 
had given up to his brother, having built himself a cottage in the grounds, 
in which he passed his mornings during the summer and autumn months ; 
the rest of the year he spent in London. He still received his visitors at 
the castle, and frequently joined the family party at dinner, or in the 
evening, and the arrangement probably contributed to the comfort of all 
parties ; for while it relieved the elder brother from the trouble unavoid¬ 
ably attendant on a large country establishment to a bachelor, it afforded 
many advantages to Mr. Andrew Knight and his family. 
In 1827, Mr. Knight had to bow beneath a bereavement from his only 
son, who died from an accidental shot, and the bereavement was the more 
severe, because he had attained to mature manhood, and was gifted with 
high mental powers. In a letter to a friend written in the course of the 
following year, Mr. Knight says ;—“ I am at present, as I have been for 
. some months, not in a state of mind to attend to, or interest myself about 
anything. I endeavour all I can to rouse myself into action, and I trust I 
shall in time succeed ; for I know that I cannot long survive in a state of 
idleness. I cannot but feel consoled and gratified by the interest taken 
in the calamity of my family by all classes. Sly son, if his life had been 
spared, I am confident would have fully justified the favourable opinion 
generally entertained of him. As a father, he never gave me pain, except 
^ when the ardour of his character, and I may say his absolute love of 
danger, excited very painful apprehensions in my mind. The ways of 
Providence are hid from our sight, but the rule by which all is guided is 
just, and life is at best but an uncertain blessing, and it is, perhaps, 
weakness to mourn for the dead.” To a casual observer a slight appear- i 
ance of nervous excitement was soon the only symptom that indicated the i 
change this blow had made—but to those who lived with him, and were 
anxiously watching the workings of his mind, the fearful struggle that 
was going on within, was painfully apparent; disappointment, neverthe¬ 
less, never, for one moment, had power to sour the sweetness of his 
temper, and he seemed to be always trying to fill the blank in his heart, 
by bestowing, if possible, redoubled kindness and affection upon those 
who were still spared to him. It was long before he was like himself 
again ; and even to the close of his life, though time had done much by 
its softening influence to restore his mind to a healthy tone, there had 
i been impressions made under the first overwhelming influence of this 
blow, which no effort of reason, nor the persuasions of those around him, 
j could ever entirely eradicate. 
In 1838, he was visited by Sir G. S. Mackenzie, who thus records the 
! impressions made upon his mind by his host:—“The venerable and 
i talented proprietor of Downton, surrounded by a princely domain of ten 
thousand acres of rich and beautiful country, thinks of nothing but of 
what may be useful to his fellow-creatures. He received us with that un¬ 
ostentatious but kindly welcome which displayed the true spirit of liospi- I 
tality ; regarding a visit as a favour conferred on the host, and not on the 
guest; and which at once excites mutual benevolence, that operates like 
magic in giving birth to friendship. It is true, we had seen our excellent 
l host once before, and enjoyed occasional correspondence with him during , 
many years. But notwithstanding, on entering a house for the first time, ; 
we felt a little awkward, as Scotchmen generally do in such circumstances. j 
In a short time, however, this was brushed off by attention from every 
side; and we experienced, with much delight the ease, grace, and kind¬ 
liness of English hospitality. Our venerable host, active and energetic 
in his /8th year as a man of 40, is one of those rarities among men, that 
know everything—who can put their hand to everything, and give a sound 
philosophical reason for what they do. He is one who can discern rotten¬ 
ness in church and state, as well as canker in a fruit-tree, and can fathom 
both. He can see the traps set for the people, as they are closely 
analogous to those ingenious ones he sets for the blackbirds that come to 
devour his fruit. He soon introduced us to his garden, which we were most 
anxious to see. We found no display—nothing for show—all was per¬ 
fectly simple and business-like, and full of experiment. Various modes 
of culture were in progress with everything ; and reasons were given for 
commencing every experiment. Were we to attempt describing all that 
we noticed in a garden at which, on account of its plainness, those who 
regard show and display would turn up their noses, it would be proper to 
think of writing a volume. We will, therefore, conclude by stating that 
Mr. Knight has not yet subscribed to the theory of the rotation of crops 
derived from the experiments which showed that plants deposited excrc- 
! mentitious matter ; the theory being that, while such matter is useless to 
| the plants that reject it, other plants are nourished by it. Further rx- 
| periments are wanted to elucidate this curious subject; and no one has 
I better means to confirm or overset the theory than Sir. Knight.” 
For these most interesting particulars we are chiefly indebted to a 
memoir written by the members of Mr. Knight’s family, and prefixed to 
a volume in which are published A selection from the Physiological and 
Horticultural Papers of the late T. A. Knight, Esq.; and it remains 
but for us to record that he died on the 11th of May, 1838. “His end 
was as peaceful as had been the pursuits of his long and useful life ; and 
few men have descended to the grave more beloved or more sincerely 
regretted by all ranks of society.” 
Meteorology of tiie Week.— From observations at Chiswick 
during the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest tem¬ 
peratures there of these days are 60.8° and 38.5°, respectively. The 
greatest heat, 80°, was on the 25th in 1840 ; and the lowest cold, 25°, 
was on the same day in 1827. Rain fell on 72 days, and 86 were fine. 
The World’s Fair is about to commence, and thousands 
of thousands of the idle, the inquisitive, and the diligent 
are about to gather, and are now gathering, to one 
point, from every civilized region of .the earth. The 
timid and the croaking are prophesying of the evils to 
result from this mingling of nations : but the same 
minds would have muttered similar forebodings over an 
intended gathering of Christian men, to celebrate a cen¬ 
tenary of the Reformation. We, on the other hand, 
venture to prophesy, that there will be no such catas¬ 
trophes as those morbid imaginations have incantated, 
but that there will be more prejudices broken down, 
more useful information imparted, and more excitement 
to emulous exertion diffused during the weeks of The 
Great Exhibition of 1851, than years could have 
effected without such a passage of arms in one arena, 
where the skilful of the whole globe are admitted to 
contend for the prizes. Excellence has emulation as 
well as diligence for a parent, and never havo both 
parents been rendered more vigorous than in the 
endeavour to raise an offspring worthy of tenanting 
the Crystal Pavilion. 
| Nor is this all the good that will be effected among 
our countrymen, for thousands will visit London on 
this occasion, tempted thither by the Exhibition, and 
the cheap transmission, who, under ordinary circum¬ 
stances, would have contemplated such a visit only as a 
dream of a wished-for land. Nor will these come to the 
metropolis actuated by the mere idle love of the new 
and the strange. We know, from the letters before us, 
of many little schemes and arrangements for acquiring 
useful knowledge during the visit, which the acquirers 
are thirsting to carry back with them to their out-of-the- 
way nooks of our happy land. Many of these schemes 
embrace the intention of visiting the establishments— 
the gardens, private as well as public—that may furnish 
suggestions and specimens for memory to store up, 
and exertion to imitate in after years; and we will not 
spare ourselves in our efforts to promote these intentions. 
“What ought we to see?” is a question in many of 
the letters we have mentioned, and we cannot employ 
ourselves better than by furnishing this general answer: 
First of all we recommend Kew Gardens to be visited, 
not only because there is assembled the best and most 
