356 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
February 4, 1888. 
After such a remarkably dry summer, of course 
it was anticipated that the winter would bring 
with it ample compensation. No such result 
has followed; indeed, so far, we have to note 
a wonderful dry winter, one marked by much 
openness, allied almost to mildness, and yet 
so diverse from the rule in association with 
open winters because of its remarkable dry¬ 
ness. Even snow visitations have been few 
and comparatively trifling, and although the 
assumed water product of a snowfall is apt 
to be largely exaggerated, yet there can be 
no doubt but that some earth moisture of a 
valuable kind does result from snowfalls. 
It is truly surprising to learn that in some 
of our large centres of population there are 
thus early evidences of a species of water 
famine. Apart from the distressing connection 
that fact shows between it and human suffer¬ 
ing, there is the warning to all associated with 
the culture of land, and especially to gardeners, 
of the kind of trouble in store when summer 
heat is with us. IVe are often warned that 
our rainfalls should he fully utilised and 
stored. The advice is excellent, but sadly 
costly to follow. To store water in a trifling 
fashion is playing with a great need, and to 
do so in a liberal way means a very great 
expense. To secure a few hundred tons of 
water is to ensure a real blessing, whilst the 
storing of but as many gallons is simply to 
keep the word of promise to the ear and 
break it to the hope. But the winter so far 
has given little spare water to store; very 
rarely have the drains and ditches been even 
half full, and at no time really full. Even 
when thus partially flooded scarcely a day or 
two have elapsed and all has passed out of 
sight. 
If February is to fill the ditches, it must 
begin early and work very thoroughly. We 
are not very expectant in the matter ; indeed, 
like most persons, perhaps, we rather regard 
such a desideratum as none the less a nuisance. 
We have such dry and often pleasant weather 
that it is not possible to regard a succession 
of downpours, allied to cold, dirt, and satura¬ 
tion, with equanimity. We are not all Mark 
Tapleys; indeed, mental satisfaction during the 
miseries incidental to a wet February is too 
rare a human trait, and may be set aside as 
almost impossible. None the less, taking a 
very matter - of - fact view of the weather 
which has marked the past twelve months, 
and looking to nature’s and other necessities 
during the ensuing summer, we can but admit 
that, intolerable as may be the nuisance, a 
thorough wet February would be a later 
blessing to all. The winter so far has enabled 
the land to be worked with exceptional advan¬ 
tage, and rarely has it been in better tilth 
than now. Should we get a really wet 
February, the finely pulverised soil will soon 
become saturated and clammy, and a worse 
seed bed could hardly be found. On the 
other hand, should the comparative dryness 
continue, we shall have a glorious seed and 
planting time, the soil being in such 
admirable condition, but the bane to that 
advantage will be found in the inevitable 
drought which must follow from a dry 
summer. 
Thus land cultivators are between two stools, 
but happily have no choice, hence they can 
philosophically bear with whichever condition 
of things may follow. Gardeners may excel 
farmers in their deep cultivation, and thus, 
as it were, compel the earth to become its 
own extractor of moisture. It is notorious 
that whilst a bad subsoil cuts the roots of 
plants off from the natural store of moisture 
deep in the earth as much as it does that 
moisture from the surface, the trenching-up 
of the subsoil deeply and thoroughly enables 
both roots to go down and moisture to ascend, 
and the evils of a dry summer are minimised. 
The moisture literally pulls the roots down¬ 
wards, and the deeper they go the more robust 
and enduring is the consequent vegetation. 
Human ingenuity, so far, in giving to land 
artificial supplies of water, seems, with us 
at least, not to have got far beyond the 
commonplace method of pouring water on to 
the surface in some fashion and allowing it 
to find its way to the roots as best it can. 
That such a method is productive of water waste, 
and especially in seasons when water is scarce, 
there can be no doubt. 
So far from wasting water by inundating 
the surface of the earth, we should rather 
strive to irrigate the soil by lateral percolation, 
which is the best of all methods of artificially 
watering the earth. The surface-watering 
and the heat keep the roots near the surface, 
at the same time the water thus frequently 
washing this upper strata, carries off with 
it much of the nutritive matter found in the 
soil. But the lateral percolation of water 
attracts the roots downwards, while the surface 
remains dry, and if often stirred is much less 
injuriously affected by heat than when fre¬ 
quently saturated and the manurial properties 
of the soil are not wasted or neutralised. We 
need artificial methods of watering, with 
essential abundance of water stored, perhaps 
infrequently, still occasionally, and then badly. 
To be enabled to regard dry years with 
equanimity because of artificial aid is, there¬ 
fore, to be more than usually fortunate. 
- ~>x<~ - 
The Eucharis Mite and how best to destroy it, 
is tlie subject for discussion at the meeting of the 
Preston and Fulwood Horticultural Society, to be held 
this (Saturday) evening. 
Mr. Charles Orchard, late of Coombe Warren, and 
well known as one of our most successful Chrysan¬ 
themum cultivators, has, we are pleased to hear, been 
appointed bailiff to the Brading Harbour Commissioners, 
St. Helen’s, Isle of Wight. His address will be Bay 
View, Brading, Isle of Wight. 
Orchid Show in Belgium. — The Cercle des 
Orchidophiles Beiges held their first exhibition of the 
season on January 23rd, when some seventy fine plants 
were exhibited ; and on January 29th the members of 
the society dined together for the first time at the 
Royal Hotel, Ghent. 
Messrs. Sutton & Sons’ popular work on gardening, 
entitled, The Culture of Vegetable and Flowers from 
Seeds and Roots, has been awarded the First Order of 
Merit, and Highest Prize Medal at the Adelaide Jubilee 
Exhibition, making seven Highest Awards to Messrs. 
Sutton’s exhibit at Adelaide. 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne Flower Shows.—The Spring 
Show is fixed for April 18th and 19th, and will take 
place in the Town Hall. The Great Autumn Show 
will be held as usual in Leazes Park on August 22nd, 
23rd, and 24th. At the Spring Show there are twelve 
classes for Auriculas, and three for Polyanthuses. 
The Best White Clematises.—Among the C. patens 
or spring-flowering section, Miss Bateman will take a 
lot of beating ; it is so free, and the flowers so pure 
and so finely formed. Among the summer-flowering 
varieties the two best are C. lanuginosa nivea, not 
Candida, which is not nearly so pure ; and C. Jackmanni 
alba. It will be very difficult indeed to name two 
better ones. 
Death of a Famous Botanist.—The death occurred 
on Tuesday last, at Balmuto, Fifeshire, of Dr. John 
Thomas Irvine Boswell, one of the foremost botanists of 
his time. Dr. Boswell was for many years curator to 
the Botanical Society of London, and was a lecturer 
at the Charing Cross and Middlesex Schools of 
Medicine. He also re-wrote the largest work on 
English botany—“Sowerby’s”—consisting of twenty 
volumes, upon which he was engaged for twenty years. 
Dr. Boswell’s family has been located at Balmuto in 
one successive line since the reign of David II., and his 
mother was a daughter of Lord Balmuto, one of the 
Lords of Session. 
Flower Shows at Manchester. — The provisional 
arrangements of the Royal Manchester and Northern 
Counties Botanical and Horticultural Society are as 
follows :—Spring Flower Shows, at the Town Hall, 
20th March and 24th April ; Grand National Horti¬ 
cultural Exhibition, at the Gardens, Old Trafford, 18th 
to 25th May (inclusive) ; Rose Show, at the Gardens, 
19th July ; Fruit and Flower Show, at the Gardens, 
20th and 21st September ; Exhibition of Hardy and 
other Fruits, at the Gardens, 24th, 25th, 26th, and 
27th October ; Chrysanthemum Show, at the Town 
Hall, 20th and 21st November. Botanical lectures, by 
Mr. Grindon, at the Gardens, every Tuesday evening 
during the months of June, July, and August. In 
addition to the above, the exhibitions of the National 
Auricula, Tulip, Carnation, and Picotee Societies will 
be held ; the times and places will in each case be duly 
announced. 
Death of Dr. Asa Gray.—America has, by the death 
of Dr. Asa Gray on Tuesday last, lost one of the most 
eminent of her scientific men. The name of Dr. Asa Gray 
has stood in the front rank of botanists for nearly half a 
century. He was a native of Paris, a small town in 
New York State, where he was born in 1810, and was 
educated for the medical profession, which, however, he 
soon abandoned in order to devote himself to the study 
of botany. At the age of thirty-two he was elected 
Professor of Natural History in Harvard College, a 
position which he nominally retained during the 
remainder of his life. Meantime his botanical works 
were gaining for him a world-wide reputation. In 1836 
he published his Elements of Botany, which was after¬ 
wards enlarged into the Botanical Text Booh. In 1838 
he, along with his friend Dr. Torrey, began The Flora 
of North America, and a series of kindred volumes, 
which have long since taken their place as standard 
works on American botany. He also continued to 
produce text books on botany ; and so vigorous was his 
intellect, that at the age of seventy he wrote a work on 
Natural Science and Religion ; and about two years ago 
appeared his Synoptical Flora of North America. He 
was one of the most constant correspondents of the late 
Charles Darwin, whose letters to Dr. Gray are not the 
least interesting portion of the recently published Life 
of Darwin. 
The Use of Flowers in Religious Ceremonies.—At 
a well-attended meeting of the Chiswick Gardeners’ 
Mutual Improvement Association on Wednesday last, 
Mr. George Gordon, of the the Gardeners' Magazine, 
read a very interesting paper on the above subject. 
He had collected together a mass of facts and statistics 
bearing on the subject from the earliest times down 
to the present day, and put the more important 
of them in the form of a paper, which elicited a 
lively xliscussion. He was accorded a hearty vote of 
thanks at the close of the meeting for his paper, 
which was quite novel in its way compared with the 
usual run of subjects discussed at such meetings. 
The Fruit Committee of the Royal Horticultural 
Society.—The paucity of, subjects submitted for the 
consideration of this committee during the early 
months of the year is always marked, and not unfre- 
quently provokes the comment that members are often 
brought long distances, at considerable cost, to find 
some few things placed before them which are of the 
most indifferent interest. Whilst the Floral Committee 
usually finds ample material before it, its fellow' com¬ 
mittee as often find next to nothing. That body, 
however, is composed of some thirty persons, all of 
whom are assumed to be fruit and vegetable growers, 
though too often not so ; but in any case it is evident 
that if one half of these persons would feel that some¬ 
thing was due to the committee and its meetings on 
their part, they would do more than is done at present 
to make the meetings attractive and practical. At the 
first assembly of the committee for the year, held on 
the 9th ult., some half-dozen persons sent contri¬ 
butions ; but only two of these came from members of 
the committee. Of course, we are not assuming for 
one moment that the sole duty of members is to provide 
material for their colleagues’ delectation ; but we do 
say that, having regard to the distressing paucity of 
material so often found associated with the meetings of 
the Fruit Committee, greater efforts should be made 
than is now the case to render those assemblies in¬ 
structive and useful. Could not the Chiswick Gardens 
be laid under contribution at this time of the year for 
such an excellent object ? Surely the poverty of the 
Royal Horticultural Society has not literally starved 
fruit and vegetable culture at Chiswick to death ! In 
any case, we do hope to see some greater effort made 
henceforth to render the meetings of the Fruit Com¬ 
mittee worthy of the society. 
Spade Tillage.—It is worthy of note that the term 
spade tillage, or labour, forms the theme of many a 
socio-political lesson just now. Somehow the fact 
seems dawning upon men s minds that after all no 
