454 
March 19, 1892. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
NATIONAL CHRYSANTHEMUM 
SOCIETY. 
The annual meeting of this society was held at 
Anderton’s Hotel, Fleet Street, E.C., on Tuesday 
evening, Mr. Robert Ballantine presiding. The 
report of the committee read by the honorary secre¬ 
tary, Mr. R. Dean, was as follows:— 
“ Yourcommittee are glad to be able to report that 
during the past year the society has fully maintained 
its position ; its work is to-day appreciated at home 
and abroad more heartily than at any previous 
period in its history, and the highest possible testi¬ 
mony to the success of its endeavours to encourage 
and assist those who are engaged in the culture of 
the Chrysanthemum is to be found in its constantly 
increasing list of members and affiliated societies. 
At the present time it numbers 656 members and 87 
affiliated societies. 
" The exhibitions held at the Royal Aquarium 
during the year 1891 have been quite worthy of a 
society calling itself National, and there has been but 
little evidence of the exhaustion of public interest 
which was expected by some after the unusual efforts 
put forth during the centenary year. The display of 
early Chrysanthemums and Dahlias in September 
was extensive and very attractive, although the 
season was somewhat unfavourable. The great No¬ 
vember show, which occupied three days, was an 
agreeable surprise both in the numbers and quality 
of the exhibits, considering the great difficulties with 
which growers had to contend owing to the wetness 
of the summer and early autumn. The committee 
greatly regretted their inability to obtain, as on other 
occasions, the use of St. Stephen’s Hall; in conse¬ 
quence the general effect was largely spoilt by the 
necessary crowding caused by the great curtailment 
of the space at their disposal. Throughout the show 
both cut flowers and specimen plants were remark¬ 
ably good, and the competition in the leading classes 
very keen. The contest for the Challenge Trophy 
was of a very spirited character, and this feature of 
the November show is growing in popularity among 
provincial societies. The experiment of a December 
instead of a January exhibition, as heretofore, was 
tried, but the result was somewhat disappointing,and 
the committee have decided to substitute for it, in 
1892, an October exhibition. 
" The Floral Committee has done a large amount 
of most useful work, and its meetings have created 
a great deal of interest, being numerously attended, 
whilst its awards have given general satisfaction. 
Whilst a large number of flowers have been sub¬ 
mitted for adjudication the committee have been 
somewhat cautious in granting certificates, and will 
continue to exercise great care in this respect. An 
additional meeting of the Floral Committee will be 
held this year in the month of September. 
" The Conference on Chrysanthemum Sports which 
was held in connection with the November show, 
was well attended, and the papers read by the Rev. 
Prof. Henslow, M.A., and Mr. Norman Davis 
excited great interest. These papers, together with 
the awards of the Floral Committee, will appear in 
the schedule for 1892, and the committee hope that 
these additions will render the latter more 
interesting and useful to the members. 
"As the advisability of increasing the size of ex¬ 
hibition boards for Japanese blooms has been much 
discussed and the society strongly urged to take 
action in the matter, it has been decided to hold a 
conference on the subject in connection with the 
October show. In view of the great differences of 
opinion among growers with regard to the matter 
the committee are of opinion that the question 
should be fully considered in ail its bearings and the 
opinion of the provincial societies ascertained before 
any change is made.” 
The financial statement showed the total receipts 
to amount to £845 15s. 5d., the principal sources of 
revenue being the subscriptions of home and foreign 
members, £197 10s. 3d. ; affiliated societies, 
£108 ffs. 6d. ; special prizes, £77 8s. 6d.; donations, 
£10 is.; and Royal Aquarium Company’s con¬ 
tribution to prize fund, £305 8s. 6d. The total ex¬ 
penditure amounted to £837 15s. 3d , the balance in 
hand being £8. The principal items of expenditure 
were :—Prizes, £423 3s. ; purchase of medals, 
engraving, etc., £94 6s. iod. ; printing, £131 9s. 2d. ; 
clerical assistance, £50; etc., etc. 
The report and statement of accounts were 
unanimously adopted, and a cordial vote of thanks 
accorded to the auditors, Mr. Cobbold and Mr. 
Crane, for their services. Mr. Leopold de Roths¬ 
child was unanimously elected president ; and the 
names of Sir John T. D. Llewelyn, Mr. Martin R. 
Smith, Mr. Samuel Barlow-, and Mr. H. R. Williams 
were added to the list of vice-presidents. The 
treasurer, Mr. J. R. Starling, chairman, Mr. Ballan¬ 
tine, vice-chairman, Mr. Jukes, secretary, Mr. R. 
Dean, and foreign corresponding secretary, Mr. C. 
Harman Payne, were all re-elected and thanked for 
their services during the past year. The following 
gentlemen were also elected to serve on the com¬ 
mittee for the next three years:—Mr. W. H. Fowler, 
Taunton; Mr. Arthur Veitch, Chelsea; Mr. G. S. 
Addison, Mr. Rowbottom, Mr. Bevan, Mr. Shoe- 
smith, Mr. A. Taylor, Mr. R. Owen, Mr. Langdon, 
Mr. Kendal, Mr. Turk, and Mr. Brooks, Highgate. 
Mr. F. A. Cobbold and Mr. G. J. Ingram (secretary 
of the Gardeners’Royal Benevolent Institution),were 
appointed auditors. 
After some discussion it was resolved on the 
motion of Mr. Fowler that rule 3 should be amended, 
so as to make it read that no retiring member of the 
committee shall be eligible for re-election who fails 
to attend six times during his term of office. It was 
also resolved that a general meeting of the members 
should be held annually on one of the evenings 'of 
the November show. Mr. C. Harman Payne, 
read a letter received from a gentleman in New 
Zealand, .who stated that he was anxious to get the 
opinion of the Society’s Floral Committee as to the 
merit of some of his seedlings raised from home- 
saved seeds, and as the plants would be in bloom in 
April, he proposed, as an experiment, to send some 
blooms to London frozen in blocks of ice. Mr. 
Payne was instructed to offer every facility for the 
trial of such a novel and interesting experiment, and 
to summon a meeting of the General and Floral 
Committees immediately the flowers arrive. A hearty 
vote of thanks to the chairman closed the proceedings. 
t ♦ ^ 
UNITED HORTICULTURAL 
PROVIDENT AND BENEFIT 
SOCIETY. 
The annual meeting of this society took place at the 
Caledonian Hotel, Adelphi Terrace, W.C., on 
Monday evening, Mr. Robert Cannell presiding. 
The report of the committee for the past year con¬ 
gratulated the members on the increase of their 
number which had taken place during the year, and 
which brought up the roll of benefit members to 413. 
There had again been a good deal of sickness among 
the members, owing to the influenza epidemic, which 
had involved an expenditure under this heading of 
£119 10s. 6d. Three deaths had occurred during the 
year, and the amounts standing to the credit of the 
deceased members had been paid to their nominees. 
The Benefit Fund had been increased during the 
year by about £600 ; and the Benevolent Fund also 
showed an increase of some £140. The accounts 
presented showed the treasurer’s receipts during the 
year to have been £1,923 18s. iod., including the 
balance carried forward from last account of 
£75 19s. 7d., and his disbursements £1,801 17s. qjd., 
leaving a balance in his hands of £121 is. 6Jd. The 
Benefit Fund showed receipts amounting to 
£4,984 2s. 6d., made up of the sum of £4,222 4s. gd. 
brought forward, and £761 17s. gd. received in sub¬ 
scriptions, interest, &c., while the expenditure, 
including sick pay and repayments to nominees of 
deceased members, etc., amounted to £206 14s. ojd., 
leaving a balance in hand to date of £4,777 8s. 5fd. 
The receipts in regard to the Benevolent Fund, in¬ 
cluding £1,561 2s. 1 id. brought forward, amounted 
to £1,720 18s. 4jd., and the expenditure to £30, 
leaving a balance in hand of £1,690 18s. 4jd. The 
receipts from the Management Fund amounted 
to £126 ns. ojd. ; and the expenses to £95 9s. 3jd., 
leaving a balance in hand of £31 is. 9jd. 
The report and statement of accounts were unani¬ 
mously adopted, and most cordial votes of thanks 
accorded to the auditors, the members of the 
committee, the treasurer and the secretary, the 
latter of whom were re-elected to their respective 
offices. Five new members were elected, and 
during the proceedings it was announced that the 
committee considered that the time had arrived 
when the valuable services rendered to the society 
by Mr. James Hudson, the treasurer, should be 
suitably acknowledged by the members. It was 
therefore proposed to present him with a testimonial 
at the annual dinner in October next. A cordial 
vote of thanks to the chairman concluded the 
business of the meeting. 
ODONTOGLOSSUMS.* 
I intend in this paper to give as nearly as possible 
my own experience in the cultivation of these beautiful 
plants. In the first place I propose to deal with the 
plants as soon as they are received from an Orchid 
nursery. As a rule they ought to be repotted or 
examined before being placed in the Odontoglossum 
house, as very often they are potted too hard for the 
roots to strike into the material, and then they ramble 
over the top and outside of the pots, where they are 
likely to take injury from the slightest change of 
temperature or dryness of the atmosphere. Also they 
not unfrequently contain a quantity of residents in 
the shape of some or other of the various kinds of 
snails, woodlice, centipedes, ants, young cockroaches, 
thrip, green fly, etc., all of which soon begin to mul¬ 
tiply if not destroyed at once. The repotting should 
be done as gently as possible, putting a little fresh 
sphagnum under the new- growths, for all new roots 
to strike in, filling the pot three-fourths with broken 
crocks first, laying some fresh sphagnum on the top 
to stop the peat when decaying from being washed 
into the drainage, filling up round the plant with 
fibrous peat and fresh sphagnum, the plant being 
well up above the rim of the pot; then surface-dress 
with a little fresh sphagnum. It is advisable to re¬ 
new the sphagnum and peat every 3-ear as the peat 
soon decays into mould, which, if short of fibre when 
wet, gets into a kind of blackish-brown mud which 
poisons every root amongst it, and causes their decay 
also. Sphagnum, no matter how it grows, after a 
while loses its uriginal nature, gets very’ soddened 
and wet, and if not in active growth rapidly decay’s 
and dies, stopping the circulation of air amongst the 
roots. I have no particular time for potting Odonto- 
glossums, except that I like to examine them just as 
they are beginning to make their y’oung growths, and 
add a little fresh moss for the new roots to strike in 
if they do not need potting. 
The temperature of the houses in winter should 
not get below 40° if possible, and then the plants 
and roots must be very dry’, or there will be danger 
of rot starting in all plants in active growth, especi¬ 
ally if there is any drip from the roof upon the 
plants. A temperature of 45 0 or 50° is better for all 
the O. crispum type. During the last winter my 
house was down to 35° several times, still I have not 
noticed any injurious effects, and all are now growing 
freely. I am very particular about maintaining a 
damp atmosphere when the plants arc growing, and 
to keep them so I never open the ventilators even if 
the sun runs up the temperature to 90 q , but trust to 
shading and syringing to keep them cool. I ought 
to say’, however, that my houses are situated under¬ 
neath a row of trees that keeps the sun off after 
11.30 in the morning, consequently’ I have not the 
hot afternoon sun to burn the foliage, which soon 
shows by turning yellow and then dropping off. 
In 1885 I had a house full of Odontoglossums that 
got frozen, in fact the house got down to 30°, and 
every plant except O. Rossi majus perished, which 
plant 1 have now. At the time of the disaster the 
plants were very wet, which I think helped to do all 
the damage. As usual the cause of my trouble was 
a defective boiler, which gave out when most wanted 
through heavy firing. I had only one house at the 
time, and I tried covering up with newspapers, etc., 
still they got frozen. I have tried several plans for 
saturating the atmosphere of my houses, but find 
that ordinary slates laid upon the staging and 
covered with sand ij in. thick, is the best. The 
plants stoed upon pots, so that any moisture arising 
out of the drying of the sand has to pass through 
the pots and amongst the foliage of the plants. The 
hot-water pipes should not be heated above 140°, or 
there will be a dry heat v. hich has a tendency to 
shrivel the bulbs when at rest and cause loss of foli¬ 
age. 
Different Odontoglots require different treatment ; 
for instance, O. Harryanum likes a temperature of 
45” minimum, and as high as you like under ioo° ; it 
also likes less water than the O. crispums. It seems 
to be always growing with me, getting stronger every 
year. O. Rossi majus, O. crispum, O. gloriosum, 
and O. tripudianus will grow very cool, but like to 
have their foliage syringed with a fine spray every 
morning, except when frosty. O. cirrhosum and 
O. blandum like even more water than does O. Cris¬ 
pum when growing, and they also enjoy the warmest 
corner of the Odontoglossum house. They are very 
* A Paper read on March 5th, before the Chester Paxton 
Society, by Mr. Wm. Bolton, Warrington. 
