274 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
January 2, 1892. 
“ In selecting varieties,” says Mr. Baines, ” care 
should be taken to procure such as are not only good, 
free growers, possessing distinct, finely-coloured 
flowers, but also such sorts as retain their bloom for 
the longest time. This is a matter that does not 
receive sufficient attention, yet is of very great im¬ 
portance, whether they are required for exhibition 
or ordinary decorative purposes, some varieties 
carrying their flowers double the length of time that 
others will.” I have kept these requirements in view 
in making the selection which heads this paper.— 
R. D. 
-- 
AN ABSTRACT VIEW OF 
HORTICULTURE* 
The subject of horticulture is a very wide one, and 
may be looked at from many and various points of 
view. I therefore decided that I would say some¬ 
thing upon the subject from what may be called an 
abstract point of view. I shall carefully abstain 
from technicalities, and not pretend to give anything 
in the way of instruction on the practical working of 
your profession, for the reason that you all know 
more about it than I do. But what I shall aim at 
doing is to create in your minds a loftier idea of the 
calling which you follow, and to show that it is 
capable of a very high development, and that it 
possesses attributes and attractions which go to 
place it in the forefront of professions. I want to 
show that horticulture is not by any means a mere 
ornamental profession, in which the professor can do 
his part or leave it undone at his pleasure ; nor is it 
simply a certain amount of weekly work done for a 
certain amount of wages. All who would discover 
its wonders and its beauties must have far higher 
aspirations than this, and must seek for its mysteries 
with loving hearts and willing hands, for it is only 
to such that Nature reveals her hidden beauties and 
wonders to the full extent; and what I wish to do in 
this paper is to lead you to find that higher develop¬ 
ment, or at any rate to seek for it, and I am sure 
that in doing this you will discover a new meaning 
in what you do, and which cannot fail to elevate 
both yourselves and your profession. 
Now, as I have said, the subject is a very large 
one, and in order to make it suit the aim of this 
paper, I purpose to divide it under four heads, which 
will be enough for us to deal with to-night ; and 
these heads will be the reasons I assign for the 
claims your profession has upon you. First, then, 
your profession is an honourable one in respect of its 
antiquity ; secondly, in respect of its beauty and 
diversity ; thirdly, in respect of its usefulness in the 
economy of nature ; and fourthly, in respect of the 
certain return with which it awards those who faith¬ 
fully and diligently follow it. As to its antiquity, I 
do not wish it to be understood that anything is to 
be esteemed as honourable simply in virtue of its 
antiquity, but that whatever is honourable and use¬ 
ful in itself, is rendered more so by having done its 
work, dispensing beauty and grace down through 
the ages, and in this respect your profession stands 
not simply first, but in front of all others. The 
first man of whom we read was a gardener, not 
simply a gardener for his own pleasure and 
amusement, but put to follow it for his livelihood. 
As far as we know the produce of the garden of Eden 
was his entire source of food supply, so that he had 
the best possible reason for being a practical gar¬ 
dener. But even this case of Adam does not carry 
us back far enough, or give us the full measure of 
antiquity, for trees and herbaceous plants existed on 
the earth before Adam. 
Geologists and botanists agree in assuring us that 
when this planet was a dark, sunless void, it was 
covered thickly with trees and shrubs, and they even 
go so far as to describe the character of the dark 
vegetable world ; and the account which they give 
agrees very much with what all of us know to be the 
case with plants grown without light. They tell us 
that trees and plants grew to enormous size, with 
stems pale in colour and foliage nearly white ; that 
Ferns grew to 30 ft. and 40 ft. in height, with 
immense fronds spreading out and covering the 
earth, rendering it damp and steamy, and in which 
grew all manner of climbing and trailing plants, 
making a perfect jungle, but all of them of the same 
sickly, colourless character, and all wanting some of 
4 A paper read by Mr. H. J. Rome at a meetingof the Ealing 
and District Gardeners’ Mu ual Improvement Society, held on 
2/th Oct, ' - ' “ - - 
that glorious sun which we unfortunately so often 
stand in need of. 
Now, compared with an antiquity like this, there 
is of course nothing in the world can rank, and how¬ 
ever much the pre-adamite portion may be difficult 
of demonstration, from Adam's time we can speak 
with more certainty, that the gardener’s art has been 
the chief factor in feeding and delighting the world, 
and through all that long period it has known no 
lapse or cessation, kings might fall, dynasties die 
out, the kingdoms of the earth crumble away, or 
altogether change their character, but in the gar¬ 
dener's art there has been no change except in deve¬ 
lopment and improvement. 
Here, then, is a glorious antiquity of which all 
faithful devotees to the art may be justly proud— 
an antiquity which fashion has not depraved, and 
of which time has not lessened either the beauty or 
the usefulness. 
Now, when I come to speak of the beauty and 
diversity of the floral world, which beauty and diver¬ 
sity is due in a large measure to the gardener’s art, 
the first thing that strikes one is its immensity, wide 
as the world and embracing amongst its votaries all 
orders of being and all varieties of human mind. The 
rich and cultured as well as the poor and ignorant, 
the young as well as the old, in prosperity or in ad¬ 
versity, in sickness or in health, at all times and in 
all places, appreciate the beauties of the floral world, 
which minister to the happiness and the enjoyment 
of life in a way and to a degree which nothing else in 
nature does. We seem to have deep down in our 
nature a faculty for the beautiful, which only flowers 
can reach and satisfy. Art has often tried and does 
try to meet this natural instinct which we possess for 
the beautiful, but it does not wholly succeed, and for 
the very simple reason that when it has done its best 
it has to go to nature for its model, and copy as near 
as may be the grace of form and delicacy of colouring 
in flowers, to give its highest expression of the 
beautiful. 
One of the great charms in flowers is that they seem 
to touch our nature in so many and so various ways, 
some by their grandeur of size and colour, others by 
their exquisite beauty of form and outline, and others 
again by the charm of their perfumes, while others 
again are beautiful in what appears to be their 
innocence and helplessness. Perhaps few things are 
more appealing than a poor Snowdrop trying to 
force its way through half-frozen, ground as if en¬ 
deavouring to escape from what has so long been its 
prison ; or perhaps a modest Daisy seeming to open 
its eye to see if spring is coming. As to this latter 
you will remember what Burns says :— 
Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow’r, 
Thou’s met me in an evil hour ; 
For I maun crush amang the stoure 
Thy slender stem; 
To spare thee now is past my pow’r, 
Thou bonnie gem ! 
It was not at all necessary from the utilitarian 
point of view that the world should be made beautiful 
with flowers. All thepurposesof ourphysical life could 
have been as well served if nothing grew more beautiful 
than a Cabbage. One prominent fact which this 
love of flowers demonstrates is that in what is best 
and noblest in our nature, all peoples of the earth, 
at all times, are and have been very much alike. 
Flowers are and have been used as the expression of 
love, of confidence, of gratitude, of constancy, of 
reverence, and, indeed, of all that goes to make up 
the best half of our nature. 
Poets have at all times used flowers as their 
highest expression of beauty. Indeed, it is not too 
much to say that but for flowers poets would have 
been without a good part of the means of giving ex¬ 
pression to their sense of the beautiful in nature. 
Painters, also, have always used flowers for the same 
purpose ; but unfortunately after all they are only 
paintings, and excite our admiration to the extent that 
they are copies of great originals. Flowers seem to 
have a more pronounced influence upon us at par¬ 
ticular seasons : when we are well and happy we 
decorate our homes, our dinner tables, our button¬ 
holes with them, indeed, we display them every¬ 
where as the expression of our joy and gladness; but 
it is perhaps in sickness or age that they shed their 
greatest power, particularly amongst the poor. In 
the sick room a fiow’er is the only joy left to a suffer¬ 
ing one. 
Who amongst us has not observed the influence of 
a poor starveling pot plant upon some aged person, 
perhaps confined to one room, and who waits upon 
it and tends it as if it were a grand specimen ? 
I cannot help thinking that if the art of the horticul¬ 
turist were so limited as to be confined to the produc¬ 
tion of flowers, it would still be one with a nobility 
of aim, which should make all engaged in it feel 
that their profession is one of usefulness and honour. 
When I come to what I call my third argument, I 
find that I shall have to enlarge my field of review, 
and in order to give you an idea of its scope, I must 
show you how nearly allied are some things which we 
are accustomed to look upon as different in charac¬ 
ter, but which are, after all, very much the same 
thing. First, then, let me say that floriculture, hor¬ 
ticulture, agriculture, and arboriculture are all as 
nearly as possible the same thing, and all come 
more or less under your management as gardeners. It 
makes very little difference whether you call your 
kitchen garden a garden or a field; the operations 
are the same, and the only difference which can 
possibly exist is that the one is usually the subject 
of a higher culture than the other. 
Not only is the higher side of our human nature 
dependent for its full development upon your ener¬ 
gies and intelligence, but our very physical existence 
is, and must be, to a large extent, dependent upon 
the properly directed energies and intelligence of the 
cultivators of what we call the vegetable kingdom. 
(To be continued.) 
ILLUSTRATED INSTRUC¬ 
TION. 
Some small experience in horticultural lecturing has 
enabled me to realise the enormous value of illustra¬ 
tions of what one is talking about, and realise how 
large a field there is open to anyone who can, by the 
production of cheap pictures, diagrams, photographs, 
etc., give to lecturers the aid they so much need. 
Of course, pictures and diagrams of objects, whether 
of vegetable life or of absolutely inanimate objects, 
must be true to character, and it would always be 
best if obtained from photographs, because these 
would at least be truthful. It has been suggested 
that gardening lectures might be largely aided by 
the employment of magic lanterns and correctly 
sketched slides. That is so, but there' is the difficulty 
that such aid would come very expensive, especially 
in rural districts, where ordinary coal gas is not 
available. 
It seems as if good diagrams of fair dimensions, 
and displaying very correct examples of the respec¬ 
tive objects referred to in the lectures, would be best 
because very instructive and very portable. Could 
these be furnished in quantity, few things would be 
more useful as aids to instruction. Here is a wide 
field open to any publisher who may care to embark 
in such an enterprise. These are however elementary 
illustrations the which only gardeners themselves 
can produce. These are found in plants, trees, 
garden produce, models of garden structures, garden 
appliances, etc., all of which presented to an 
audience would wonderfully help to elucidate mat¬ 
ters which would otherwise perhaps be dry and 
uninteresting. An audience of comparatively ignor¬ 
ant cottagers or others of similar calibre would 
find examples of grafting, of bedding, pruning, pot¬ 
ting, and many other of the higher practices in 
gardening most instructive. So far the present 
courses of technical instruction in horticulture have 
had to be very hastily arranged, and a further course 
may be much more completely illustrated.— D. 
PEAR BEURRE DIEL. 
When grown as a wall tree or as an espalier the 
fruit of this Pear attains a large size; but on stan 
dards is only of medium size. It is obovate in outline 
and rather uneven on the surface, with a pale green 
skin changing to pale yellow in November, and 
thickly spotted all over with large russety markings, 
with occasional splashes of brown russet. The flesh 
is pale yellowish-white, rich, buttery, and melting in 
its latter stages, but previously to that it is firmer 
though tender and very juicy. In either stages it 
forms good eating, and it depends upon the taste of 
the eater as to what degree of ripeness is the most 
appreciated or acceptable. Another point to be noted 
is that the fruit varies considerably in quality in 
different parts of the country and in different soils 
and seasons, a fact which applies to various other 
Pears in cultivation. The tree is a heavy bearer 
especially when grown as a standard, and that, to¬ 
gether with its late keeping qualities, should be taken 
into consideration by the planter. The fruits attained 
a fine size on horizontally trained trees against a wall 
in the gardens of Templeton House, Roehampton, 
under the management of Mr. J. P. Kendall. 
