July 17, 1886. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
723 
ROS ES IN P OTS. 
ER MAJESTY, THE BENNETT ROSE, 
and aU the best new English and Foreign varieties. 
All the choicest well-tried sorts in pots, 15s. to 36s. per dozen. 
Descriptive List free on application. 
RICHARD SMITH & Co., 
NURSERYMEN AND SEED MERCHANTS, 
WORCESTER. 
CONTENTS. 
PAGE 
PAGE 
Agave filifera flowering . 
. 723 
Nottingham Flower Show.. 
733 
Amateurs’ Garden. 
727 
Odontoglossuni citrosmum 
729 
Cheltenham Flower Show 
. 7S3 
Onion in Literature, the .. 
726 
Chrysanthemum Culture. 
724 
Pansies. 
731 
Cirrhaea saccata. 
732 
Pansies, exhibiting . 
731 
Cypripedium eaudatum . 
. 732 
Peas, new. 
731 
Dahlias. 
732 
Pelargonium, Duchess of 
Dendrobiura Williams- 
Albany . 
723 
ianum. 
. 732 
Potentillas, double . 
730 
Distinctness. 
731 
Roses, own root. 
731 
Fabiana imbrieata. 
731 
Royal Horticultural Society 732 
732 
727 
Gardeners’ Calendar. 
732 
Shades in Gardens. 
724 
Gladiolus Colvilli alba ... 
724 
Sidcup Rose Show. 
726 
Highgate Horticultural 
Stocks, Ten-weeks. 
724 
Society . 
734 
Table Decorations. 
731 
Impatiens Hawkerii. 
725 
Vine Culture, hints on .... 
730 
Liverpool Show, the recent 723 
Wirral Rose Show. 
734 
London Gardening. 
728 
“ Gardening is the purest of human pleasures, and the greatest 
refreshment to the spirit of man.”— Bacon. 
SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1886. 
The Recent Liverpool Show.— We had hoped 
the council of the Royal Horticultural Society 
might have been spared the humiliation of 
having its distressing financial failure at Liver¬ 
pool proclaimed from the housetops. That has, 
however, been done elsewdrere, and any further 
reticence on our part would be absurd. We 
must, however, express hearty and deep con¬ 
cern with the council and with all who laboured 
so hard to promote the success of the show, 
because we felt from the first inception of the 
proposal to go to Liverpool, that it was a move¬ 
ment which merited the hearty support of the 
entire horticultural community. We have seen 
the society badgered on every hand to make a 
move of this description, and those who remem¬ 
ber the eclat and undoubted success which was 
attached to the earlier provincial shows, natur¬ 
ally felt that much could be done by the society 
in re-starting these exhibitions to improve its 
position in the country, and to give it a truly 
national basis. 
However, the venture has once more been 
boldly made at one of the largest and most 
advanced horticultural towns in the provinces, 
and financially-it has proved to be a disastrous 
failure. The show was there, generally a grand 
show, and one which was anticipated would 
have attracted myriads from the Lancashire 
and Cheshire towns and densely populated dis¬ 
tricts. Unhappily no such results followed, 
and the people treated this costly and interesting 
exhibition with utter indifference. It may be 
true that some of the projected features of the 
exhibition were not fully a success. Those 
were, however, mere matters of detail, and did 
not affect the general aspects of the exhibition, 
which was in material and area both excellent 
and interesting, and well worthy the society 
which promoted it. The exhibition certainly 
had splendid weather in its favour—far from 
being a common experience in Lancashire—and 
it cannot be said to have appreciably suffered 
from the elections which proceeded at the time, 
because those failed to excite any strong feeling 
or special party interest in Liverpool. Not¬ 
withstanding the counter and more powerful 
attraction close by—“ The Shipperies ”—it is 
exceedingly difficult to tell where to look for 
the causes of public indifference to the show, 
although in some quarters hints are freely thrown 
out that the council of the Royal Horticultural 
Society were not happy in their choice of the 
ambassador or avant-coureur who was specially 
commissioned to arrange matters locally in the 
interests of the exhibition. 
The long possession of actual dictatoria 
powers in connection with an exhibition of a 
somewhat diverse kind would hardly conduce 
to the development of the suavity and geniality 
of disposition needed to procure the hearty co¬ 
operation of the Liverpool people, even though 
allied to semi-aristocratic connections. It is, 
indeed, feared that in its governing body the 
Royal Horticultural Society is singularly un¬ 
fortunate, as it seems to lack the possession of 
those elements through which alone success may 
be hoped for. To be clever amateur horticul¬ 
turists, or respectable men of science, doubtless 
befits for some positions, but to conduct the 
affairs of a great society, or one which should 
he both great and national, and especially to 
successfully carry out a great exhibition, requires 
something more than mere respectability or 
“ science”; it needs very considerable influence, 
business capacity, tact, suavity, and many other 
elements which are not too common in hu¬ 
manity. 
We may take it for granted that henceforth, 
or for some years, at all events, no more will be 
heard of provincial shows on the part of the 
R. H. S., and that the aspirations of that irre¬ 
pressible enthusiast, Mr. Manning, are, as far 
as this society is concerned, utterly squashed. 
Still farther, the heavy deficit arising from the 
Liverpool Show must sit, like an old man of the 
sea, on the hack of the society for many years 
to come, crippling its resources, and at a peculiar 
moment of trial in the conduct of its future 
arrangements with the South Kensington autho¬ 
rities handicapping its executive. It is of no 
use to blame, let the fault, if any, he where it 
may. Too probably the same result would have 
happened almost anywhere now, because the 
“Royal” is a society known pretty well to habi¬ 
tues of South Kensington and readers of the 
gardening papers, but to the vast mass of the 
people is as strange as if its habitation were in 
Timbuctoo. 
Probably, the Council owes this ignorance 
and apparent indifference to its own inertness, 
for it has been so much absorbed in the past in 
its little efforts at South Kensington that it has 
forgotten its title, and that to fit that title its 
work and range of operations should be national. 
The president of the society did the other day 
offer the observation apparent to us and myriads 
of others long since, “ that in this country we 
were too apt to think we were the centre of the 
universe, and that all other countries simply 
circulated round us as the planets do round the 
sun.” It was a proper slap at our detestable 
insular pride and prejudice, which should have 
been apparent to Sir Trevor Lawrence long 
since. Just these very failings have been too 
long dominant at South Kensington, and the 
same illusion has there prevailed. At last, 
however, it has received a calamitous rebuke, 
for the outer world, horticultural and general, 
now treats the Royal Horticultural Society with 
scant courtesy—indeed, with absolute indiffer¬ 
ence. 
The Gas Plant, Dictamntjs fraxinella. —The 
American Agriculturist notes that anyone may note 
the gas-producing emanations from this plant by 
lighting a match under it at night. It is one of the 
most beautiful of hardy herbaceous plants, indepen¬ 
dently of this interesting character, and easily grown. 
GARDENING MISCELLANY. 
Meetings for next week .—Tuesday: Chris- 
tleton Rose Show. Wednesday : Horticultural Exhi¬ 
bition at Newcastle-on-Tyne (three days). 
Agave fllifera. —In the fine collection of plants, 
exhibited in the grounds of the International Exhibi¬ 
tion at Edinburgh by Messrs. Ireland & Thomson, there 
is a fine specimen of this Agave throwing up a flower- 
stem. This is so rare an occurrence, that very few gar¬ 
deners of even the longest experience have ever seen the 
plant in flower. It is a very old specimen, but as to 
what its exact age may be there is no means of ascer¬ 
taining. 
A New Insect Enemy to the Potato is re¬ 
ported to have'appeared on Long Island farms, New 
York, and is proving more destructive than the Potato 
bug. It is about the size of the ordinary Potato beetle, 
and eats the underside of the tender leaves, leaving 
the fibre only. 
Myrmecodia Beccari, a native of tropical 
Australia, sent to Kew in January last by Messrs. 
James Veitch & Sons, is described by Sir Joseph Hooker 
in the current number of the Botanical Magazine, as 
being “one of the most singular plants ever imported in 
a living state into this country, and it belongs to a genus, 
or rather to one of a group of genera of epiphytic 
Rubiacsea, which have been long known from their 
singular habit of forming often spinous tubers of great 
size, the interior of which is galleried by ants of various 
species, and of which insects these are the native 
homes.” 
Plants Certificated in Ghent. —At the 
meeting of the Belgian Chamber of Horticulture, held 
on the 5th instant, Certificates of Merit were awarded 
to Pernettya lilacina nigra major and P. 1. fractu albo 
from M. Alex. Dalliere ; Hoplophyton robustum varie 
gatum from M. Aug. Yan Geert ; Anthurium Schert- 
zerianum var. sanguineum, from M. Desmet-Duvivier ; 
Coelogyne Massangeana from MM. Yervaet & Co. ; 
Alocasia Augustiana, A. gigas, A. marmorata, A. 
nigricans, Phrynium variegatum, Sagenia mammillosa, 
and Amaryllis Bongueroth from the Continental Horti¬ 
cultural Company (Director, M. J. Linden). 
Pelargonium, Duchess of Albany. — 
Messrs. J. Lewis & Son, Newtown Nurseries, Malvern. 
-—Y^e have received some cut blooms of a new Regal 
Pelargonium, named Duchess of Albany, which appears 
to be a desirable acquisition. The blooms are large 
with stiff footstalks, three to four in a truss, semi¬ 
double, and the petals beautifully crisped as in the 
Regal type proper. Its colour is dark crimson, with 
velvety maroon blotch, and light centre, and some of 
the petals are splashed with rose—a pretty combination 
of colours. 
Summer-flowering Chrysanthemums. — 
One of the first of the early-flowering Chrysanthemums 
to come into bloom this season, is the pretty little 
variety named Surprise, of which we gave an illustra¬ 
tion in our issue for November 7th last. Some flowers 
before us, received from Mr. W. E. Boyce, of Highgate, 
are very pleasing, being about the size of a double 
Daisy, remarkably neat and full, and bright rose in 
colour, but becoming paler with age. It is a won- 
drously free bloomer, the same plants yielding flowers 
from July to November. 
Royalty in South London. —Her Royal 
Highness the Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of 
Teck, always to the front in good works, has gra¬ 
ciously consented to open a large People’s Flower 
Show and Industrial Exhibition in the parish of All 
Saints, South Lambeth. The exhibition is to be 
held at the Manor House, Priory Road, Wandsworth 
Road, S.W., and the promoters are most desirous 
that it shall be in every way a success. Its object 
is to encourage the poor of this sadly overcrowded 
neighbourhood to grow flowers, and to teach them to 
cultivate that industry, in which they take a special 
interest. About 200 money prizes are offered, 
amongst which are special prizes given by well- 
known philanthropists, as the Duke of W estminster, 
K.G., the Lady Emily Cavendish, Sir Donald Currie, 
K.C.M.G., M.P., and others, many of whom have 
promised to support the Princess at the opening cere¬ 
mony on July 19th. The entrance money is very 
small, and all competitors receive a free ticket for the 
distribution of prizes on Y ednesday, 21st of July, at 
which Lieut.-General Sir Frederick Fitzwygram, Bart., 
M.P., lias promised to preside. 
