February 4, 1888. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
357 
machine, however ingenious in construction, has yet 
been able to compete with the spade (or fork) as an 
implement of cultivation. A machine can accomplish 
only that which it is set to do, but a spade must be 
under the control of an intelligent being, and in his 
hands is capable of wonders. Nothing in creation can 
excel for power and usefulness the human hand, and 
the spade under its manipulation becomes the most 
useful factor in land cultivation. We have no machine 
which can trench land, and gardeners universally agree 
in holding that there can be no cultivation proper that 
does not comprise trenching. But the economists who 
advocate spade labour do so on the ground that it 
gives not only the most profitable form of land labour, 
but also that labour in the greatest abundance. We 
see that in the most marked degree in private gardens, 
where cultivation transcends in quality anything 
which farmers of the ordinary type have little con¬ 
ception of. AVe see this spade cultivation in a less 
marked but still most important form in our best 
market gardens, where not only does the land sustain 
thrice, and, perhaps, six times the quantity of labour 
found on farms, but the labour is both of better quality 
and much better paid. No wonder then that spade 
labour is so strongly advocated as the chief saving 
grace in land cultivation in this country, because it 
will create out of land an immensely increased quantity 
of produce, and thus, in creating wealth and labour, at 
once tend to the national prosperity. A few years ago 
farmers held that machinery was to accomplish every¬ 
thing in cultivation. That anticipation has been now 
rudely dissipated, and the spade and fork in the hand 
of capable labour is again being fitly appreciated. 
The Carnation and Picotee Union, Oxford.—Mr. 
E. S. Dodwell, the honorary secretary and treasurer, 
has just issued the annual report for 1887 in the form 
of a very instructive pamphlet of thirty-six pages. 
Subscriptions and donations for the past year amount 
to £125 18s., and a balance of £20 6s. 3 d. is carried 
over to the present year. In the first year of the 
existence of the union (1885) there were 110 members ; 
in 1886 an addition of 112 was made ; and in the year 
now closing a further accession of eighty-four was 
obtained. Deducting the losses from death—a heavy 
item—and the accidents which belong especially to 
voluntary associations, the union has at this time 265 
subscribers, a number five times in excess of any 
attained by other associations formed to promote the 
development of the Carnation. Its income in the first 
year from all sources was £70 16s. 6cl. ; in the second 
year £94 17s. 6 d .; and in 1887, as stated above, 
£125 18s. In the first year prizes amounting to 
£41 6s. 6d. were paid to twenty-two competitors ; in 
the second year £13 10s. to twenty-one competitors ; 
and in the third year £57 18s. to thirty-one exhibitors. 
In the first year the largest amount taken by any one 
competitor was £5 6s. Qd. ; in the second year 
£5 19s. 6 d.; in the third year £6 8s. 6 cl. No worthy 
exhibit went unrewarded, nor did any competitor go 
empty-handed away. This result is in marked contrast 
with the practice at South Kensington, where the rule 
of many classes and few prizes in each class —necessarily 
adopted in 1877, when exhibitors were so few—has 
been maintained, against all reason and equity, long 
after such necessity has passed. One of the most 
interesting portions of the report is the answers 
received from Mr. AY. M. Hewitt, Chesterfield ; Mr. 
B. Simonite, Sheffield ; Mr. Bichard Gorton, Eccles ; 
Mr. AY. L. AYalker, Reading ; Mr. J. S. Hedderley, 
Balcote, Notts; Mr. Tom Lord, Todmorden ; Mr. 
Samuel Barlow, Stakehill; Mr. R. Dean, Ealing ; and 
Mr. M. Rowan, Clapham. These are all furnished in 
reply to two queries—1st, the incidence of the season ; 
2nd, the good flowers grown or seen. The result is 
several pages of most valuable information to growers 
of the Carnation and Picotee. Mr. Dodwell remarks, 
in reference to the exhibition held on August 2nd last, 
that “ it was one of the finest ever seen,” and this was 
the opinion held by growers from all parts of the 
country. The exhibition to take place in the present 
year will be held on Tuesday, August 7th. 
- ~>T<~ - 
FARMING AND GARDENING. 
Elementary Technical Education. 
“Migration of people into the towns is becoming one 
of the most terrible social problems of the day.” This 
is the concluding sentence of a very interesting article 
in your last issue, while dealing with agricultural and 
gardening elementary education and the prospective 
probability of provision being made therefor in the 
promised Technical Education Bill. I shall make no 
political reference beyond saying that I agree with your 
estimate of Mr. Jesse Collings, M.P., who has given 
notice of the bill, but I think he should leave it to Sir 
AA r illiam Hart-Dyke, M.P., who introduced the bill 
last year, that is, if it is meant to pass and be effective. 
To be effective, what will be required—confining our 
view at present to gardening, and taking in the three 
countries, England, Ireland, and Scotland ? 1, an 
elementary school ; 2, a piece of land ; 3, a competent 
teacher ; 4, money to provide those, and children and 
their parents (a consideration not to be forgotten) desir¬ 
ing or valuing this sort of instruction. There are fifty 
other considerations, but these are primary and on the 
surface, and readily occur to your correspondent, who 
is generally acquainted with most parts of England 
and Ireland, and with farming and gardening education 
for thirty years. 
It would be hopeless to aim at more than a cursory 
reference to each point. 1.— Probably the educational 
departments in each country could readily furnish a 
return, showing the number of elementary (national) 
and hoard schools (a) having already school gardens 
(with their extent) ; ( b) those with land (purchaseable) 
within ten minutes’ walk ; and (c) the schools that, from 
various causes, such as being situated centrally in 
large towns, there would be no hope of having land 
for garden instruction attached thereto. Such a return 
would be first and second points, and clear the way for 
the third and fourth. 3.—-As you note, where are the 
teachers that are competent to teach even elementary 
gardening to be found ? —not mentioning Mr. Collings’ 
“Pruning, Grafting, Bee-keeping, Creameries, &c.” 
In Ireland there were a number of Government-managed 
model farms with schools attached, and generally 
gardens, but the Treasury, for economy, ordered all 
except two—Glasnevin Albert Farm and Cork Dairy 
Schools—to be sold. These were, however, never 
intended for training teachers. 
I am not aware that there is any Government 
Institute in England, where teachers are, or were, 
practically trained for giving elementary gardening, or 
even farming instruction in the public schools. This, 
I presume, would be a sine qud non to such a scheme. 
Lastly, as you surmise, the money should come from 
national funds, and then how are those to he con¬ 
ciliated who would consider other branches of technical 
education much more important 1 Though those 
difficulties must he faced and met, he will be the 
greatest benefactor of the present age who will succeed 
in migrating the people from the towns to the country 
and locating them there. — IF. J. Murphy, Clonmel. 
-->*<-- 
THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL 
SOCIETY. 
You can hardly be aware of what has been going on at 
the Linnean Society or you would doubtless have 
referred to the matter in your leader of January 21st. 
Mr. Thiselton Dyer was a member of the council of 
that society, and for some reason or other did his best 
to upset the harmonious working of the same ; but 
now that he has been got rid of the sense of relief that 
is felt by the Fellows is most marked. It is much to 
be deplored that so clever a man does not stick to his 
work at the Royal Gardens, Kew, where, since he got 
control, piles of correspondence full of interesting 
matter from many parts have been lost to science. 
Residents abroad who have collected and sent home 
details, hoping that they would be looked into and 
reported upon, when they return home express their 
disgust at the neglect. They further report that 
Germans are being sent out to investigate the resources 
of our colonies, and collect gums, drugs, and food- 
yielding products, and that as soon as the reports 
reach head-quarters they are published, and our 
consuls and merchants see them translated into the 
American papers, and then copied in an abbreviated 
form into the pharmaceutical journals of England, or 
the gardening papers. 
The Government promised, through the First Com¬ 
missioner, that the arrears of annual reports from 1882 
should be collected and published, and their neglect to 
do so will be brought before Parliament this year. AA r hen 
Mr. Morris was appointed to Kew, he promised that 
things should soon change, and that he would dig out 
the hidden treasures ; but he was very soon gagged and 
told to pay more attention to his tennis-playing, or to 
republish some of his dry theoretical papers from his 
tracts bearing on the information he scrambled together 
during a journey through our AVest Indian Islands. 
AYell may our Ministers tell us that there is ample 
work for Parliament to do in connection with our home 
affairs ; for that some of our establishments, and Kew 
amongst them, want looking into is admitted on all 
hands. AVe must find a man of Lord Charles Beresford’s 
type, who will prevent Mr. Plunket from making 
statements in the House of Commons which he does 
not see carried out. It was only at his urgent request 
that the matter was not pushed home last session. 
Time has shown those who have waited what 
amount of earnestness there was in the intention, 
when the Kew authorities pleaded for time. An 
“overworked staff” indeed! How can Mr. Dyer 
plead that his staff has not time to carry out the orders 
of the Minister, while he can not only spare time himself 
for interfering in the affairs of the Royal Horticultural 
Society, but is now doing his best to get his chief 
subordinate appointed to the post of treasurer of that 
society, in opposition to more worthy Fellows ? Mr. 
Morris’s election to the council, and thereby his election 
to the treasurership, can in no way benefit the society, 
and it is time such jobbery by Government officials was 
stopped.— Sugar Cane. [AVe are well informed as to 
what has been going on at the Linnean Society, but 
for the moment we are more interested in the fate of 
the Royal Horticultural Society. The Linnean Society 
is practically a private corporation which does not 
much concern the general public ; but the management 
of Kew—a public institution kept up at the expense of 
the State—is another matter. It is time someone 
pressed the Government to see that the State gets value 
for the large sum spent on that establishment.—E d.] 
-—>3K—- 
ORCHIDS IN FLOWER AT 
WOOLTON WOOD. 
The Orchid houses at AA r oolton AYood, Liverpool, the 
residence of Holbrook Gaskell, Esq., are very gay with 
bloom at the present time. The plants are allowed to 
expand their flowers in the houses where they are 
grown, and not taken into any special structure for this 
purpose ; thus the interest of the visitor is maintained 
from first to last. 
The first to attract attention is Cattleya Triante 
Normanii, with its deep crimson lip and blush sepals 
