June 28, 1890. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
679 
The Acacia, employing its popular name, is a native 
of the United States, from Pennsylvania northward to 
Carolina. It makes a large tree from 50 ft. to 80 ft. 
high, with smooth, naked young branches. In north 
America it is commonly known as the Locust Tree, and 
is highly valued for the hardness and durability of its 
wood. It was with it that most of the houses were 
built which sheltered the Pilgrim Fathers, and founded 
the city of Boston. The wood, when green, is of a 
soft texture ; but when dry, is very hard, close-grained 
and finely veined, and in America is more valued by 
cabinet-makers than any timber whatever. Opinions 
differ as to the value of the Acacia as an ornamental 
tree. One authority writes of it as being well worthy 
of notice, its graceful foliage and profusion of fragrant 
flowers rendering it peculiarly adapted for parks and 
pleasure grounds. Another thinks it inelegant, wanting 
in symmetry, not very long-lived, and the branches 
being very brittle, are liable to mutilation from the 
wind. Of all trees, perhaps, it is the one which gives 
the gardener most trouble in the way of cleaning after 
it. At this season of the year its blossoms fall, and 
occasion much sweeping up. Its branches being brittle, 
are much broken about in a gale of wind ; it throws up 
an abundance of suckers from the roots, the foliage 
falls early in autumn, and the seed pods and leaf stems 
occasion great trouble and labour to the tidy gardener. 
It is said to have been this tree that William 
Cobbett—who, Mr. A. J. Downing states, “ was as great 
a quack at gardening as the famous pill dealers now are 
in medicine”—endeavoured to cultivate in this country 
as a profitable speculation. He brought a great 
quantity of seeds of it from America with him, and he 
reared plants and sold them in immense quantities. 
In his Woodlands, which appeared about that time, he 
praised its value and utility in the most exaggerated 
terms, affirming “that no man in America will pretend 
to say he ever saw a bit of it in a decayed state,” and 
that “its wood is absolutely indestructible by the 
powers of earth, air and water.” 
When the Acacia has reached a great age it is covered 
with a very deeply cleft bark, and it loses the sharp 
spines which previously existed on its branches. Its 
wood is of a greenish yellow colour, with brown veins, 
hard, compact, and susceptible of a good polish ; it is 
also tolerably strong, but rather brittle. The property 
for which it is most highly prized in America is that of 
resisting the effects of the weather for a length of time. 
The peculiar yellow tinge in its wood has caused it to 
be known there as the Yellow Locust Tree. 
It would appear that the Acacia has somewhat of a 
funereal character, since we find the American and English 
Freemasons make a practice of dropping its twigs on the 
coffins of brethren. A sprig of Acacia, it is said, is one 
of the emblems specially revered by Freemasons.— R. D. 
--> 3 =<«»- 
IS TECHNICAL EDUCATION 
NECESSARY FOR A GARDENER? 
Nine-tenths of our present-day gardeners will answer 
this question, without any hesitation, in the negative. 
That they claim a share of our sympathy in so doing 
cannot be denied, and that they have the best of the 
argument would appear at first sight beyond dispute ; 
hut horticulture is improving and progressing, and this 
advance must be accounted for in some way or other. 
If gardening can be proved to be successfully developed 
without any aid outside itself, it must be plain that any 
forward strides made must necessarily be accidental, 
and consequently remain phenomenal. In any art, 
science is the Lux in tenebris that opens up the dark¬ 
ness, and paves the way for progress. The average 
gardener denies this as being applicable to his pro¬ 
fession. There must be something seriously wrong 
here, then—progress being admitted and outward aids 
disclaimed. To resolve the problem, therefore, to its 
simplest forms, it will thus appear: if the gardener 
refuses to identify himself with the technical side of the 
art, it is evident he can take no credit for any progress 
made ; therefore, this progress, in the main, is inde¬ 
pendent of the gardener—a force altogether outside the 
profession. 
It may be asked—and quite naturally, too—If those 
who are directly concerned in the art are not those who 
give impulse to it, who else do or can l The answer 
again is here clear. From what has been demonstrated 
above, it will be seen that the value of the art as a 
profession, minus acknowledgment of the technical 
side, cannot be removed very many degrees from the 
vocation of flunkey, or labourer—an endless round of 
mechanical performances, inspired from the successes 
and reverses of antecedent actors. Such an employ¬ 
ment, conducted on a series of rule-of-thumb formulas, 
is possible to preserve all its hoary antiquities intact to 
the end of time. But progress would not be made. 
Any who are inclined to discredit this can only refer to 
Chinese civilization. The natural conclusion then 
comes inevitably upon us, that we do not owe the 
progress of horticulture to the profession. 
So much for that part of the question. Let us now 
examine the quarter from whence we can onlyreasonably 
suspect that the impulse which has forwarded the art 
has come. Education has instilled into the popular 
mind a taste for flowers, fruits and vegetables. With 
the increase of this taste the art has developed, so much 
so that the demand exceeded the supply to the 
extent that those who could easily secure the raw 
material set about to manufacture the products 
for themselves. The most of these did not pro¬ 
ceed on prescribed dogma, and were on that account 
free from bias. Many were believers in the doctrines 
of science ; in fact, the greater number were open to any 
information whatever likely to assist them in the work 
they took in hand. Proceeding on the lines of pure 
love for their hobby, the consequence was that in a 
very short time this obnoxious extramural prodigy 
pierced the hoary and venerable curtain that veiled the 
mysteries of the art, and the mystic power of the 
gardener himself, from the outward world. 
Simultaneously with this profanation of occult 
necromancy to the mercy of the four winds of heaven, 
came the downfall of the professor himself, like the 
ancient Druid who, when once the mysteries of his 
profession were uncovered, saw his power was at an end. 
Let us look at the physician, for instance. He still 
retains his mystic power over the people, and why ? 
Because he keeps ahead of them. We need not refer 
to the clergy, for they hold the identical position 
which the professional gardener does in the public 
estimation—a piteous wail for supremacy, as they come 
limping on in the rear ; but the crowd cannot wait. 
Now that the gardener ceases to be an oracle, it will 
be plain that he accomplishes nothing of sufficient 
interest to startle or call for the attention of the 
outside world. They cannot understand it, may be 
advanced as a plea. That is perfect rubbish, and any 
man of sense would not for a moment insinuate such a 
lame excuse. Many pleas have been advanced, but 
the correct state of affairs is that want of originality— 
the result of insufficient education—is the sole cause of 
the matter. We have seen the physicians case’ accounted 
for, and the same law operates in every art and pro¬ 
fession. How can we prove the truths which have 
been unearthed by eminent botanists, bearing upon the 
art, without education ? We cannot do it; we must 
accept it for what it is worth. 
The chief idea that the professional gardener has got 
hold of, under the mistaken notion of art development, 
is monstrosity. If science were called to the rescue it 
is quite possible that this misconception or perversion 
of the beautiful would in a short time vanish like new- 
fallen snow. This is what the profession is proud to 
call “up to date.” They do not seem to see that “up 
to date” may mean nothing more than catering for the 
abnormalities of the laws of supply and demand. The 
thing wanted then is specified before it is produced. 
This is “up to date,” or properly speaking, up to 
demand. This is not the sort of soothing syrup that 
should satiate the ambition of the profession ; strike 
out, aim high, and convince the laity that you can lead 
them. There is ample latent force sheltering behind 
the tattered banner to accomplish this, plus education, 
and then the conceptions and grovelling opinions that 
this fretful laity have formed of us as being in 
possession of nothing but what they can acquire 
themselves, will be completely upturned. 
It may be argued that the laity can as easily 
accomplish such a state of proficiency as well as the 
professional. From what has already transpired in the 
struggle for supremacy between both, it is quite natural 
for us to suppose so. But we must examine the 
causes which were at work in effecting what had taken 
place between them, and then half the difficulty 
vanishes. The professional side of horticulture, it will 
be granted, was extremely conservative, and tardy to 
embrace anything that tended to depart from pre¬ 
scription. The cause for this lay in the fact that they 
were insufficiently enlightened in extraneous matters to 
reason the advantage or disadvantage such a step 
would give them. We have remarked that education 
was the stimulus that set the laity to practice horti¬ 
culture. Now it is plain that they cannot have the 
same advantages that the professional possesses. In 
exceptional cases it may be so, but it is impossible to 
become the rule, for very obvious reasons. 
The professional devotes his life to the art—the 
layman only his spare time. Then if the layman, only 
by engaging in gardening as a pastime has outwitted 
the professional, it is evident education has done much 
for him, and the want of it the reverse to the pro¬ 
fessional. The margin favouring the professional is, 
on that account, a wide one, and which, if advantage is 
taken of it by embracing universally the aids of 
technical education, will be plus the professional 
part of the art in advance of the layman. If the 
education is of a special kind, the chances are that, 
like the physician, the whole system can be raised out 
of the unhallowed clutches of the laity. Edinburgh 
has taken a step in the right direction in recognising 
the importance of horticulture by including it among 
the “ Classes of Technology ” in the Heriott-Watt 
College. Much praise is due to the benevolent gen¬ 
tlemen who have the welfare of the art so deep at 
heart as thus to lay the foundation stone of what may 
yet prove an incalculable blessing to horticulture, and 
a lasting memorial of their worth.— Gamma, Edin¬ 
burgh. 
-—>K-- 
SWEET PEAS. 
No man has done so much in the way of improving 
the varieties of Sweet Peas as Mr. Henry Eckford, 
Wem, Salop, who, during the last teD or twelve years, 
has greatly extended the number of sorts in cultivation, 
and succeeded in producing some new types of excep¬ 
tional beauty and novel colours, and who went about his 
work in a thoroughly systematic way. Being of an 
enterprising nature, and seeing that what had been 
done with the ordinary edible Pea, by means of careful 
cross-fertilisation, was also possible in the case of the 
fragrant Sweet Pea of southern Sicily, he collected the 
best varieties then in cultivation, such as Invincible 
Scarlet, Violet Queen, Princess of Prussia, Butterfly, 
The Queen, and Giant Purple, and these were crossed 
in various ways, a careful record of each cross being 
kept. 
His earliest new varieties—Black Prince, came from 
the Black Sweet Pea crossed with Invincible Scarlet ; 
Yictoria, pale rose dashed with pink, the white wings 
having a wire edge of blue, was from Violet Queen and 
Princess of Prussia ; and Lottie Eckford, white, blue 
and pink, from the same cross. Leviathan, bright 
rosy scarlet and white ; and Grandeur, bright scarlet 
and rosy purple wings, came from Scarlet Invincible 
and The Queen ; Blue King and Indigo, both of them 
being characterised by decided shades of blue, came 
from The Queen and Princess of Prussia ; Duchess 
of Albany, delicate pink with delicate blush wings, 
came from the same cross as Lottie Eckford ; and 
Salmon Queen, a charming rosy salmon-coloured 
variety, from Captain Clarke’s Sweet Pea, an old kind, 
and Butterfly. It is not necessary to give a list of the 
whole of the crosses made by Mr. Eckford, but I have 
named these to show with what method and care he 
puts forth efforts to improve our Sweet Peas, and it 
must be admitted he has achieved conspicuous success. 
In making his crosses Mr. Eckford always selects a 
young flower for the seed parent, in order to have a 
blossom free from any previous fertilising process ; but 
he finds in practice that some blossoms are much more 
readily fertilised than others. One thing appears to be 
certain, and that is, the artificially-fertilised pod is 
never so large nor produces such fine seeds as one 
untouched by the hand of man. 
One remarkable feature about new varieties of Sweet 
Peas is that they come very true from seed. Occasion¬ 
ally one finds another variety among them, but I think 
it is more likely to be traceable to an accidental 
mixture rather than to any harking back to one of the 
parents. 
Anyone interested in the fragrant Sweet Pea can 
only speculate as to its origin. So few of the species 
of Lathvrus are scented that one wonders how this par¬ 
ticular "type came to be distinguished by a grateful 
perfume. It is a wild as well as a cultivated plant in 
southern Sicily, the country from which it was 
originally imported. 
The Sweet Pea is one of the most popular of our 
hardy annuals, and it would be difficult to find a flower 
garden in which it does not hold a place. The value 
of the Sweet Pea for cutting is shown by the fact that 
almost every gardener grows a line or two of mixed 
varieties to cut from. One of the most striking floral 
effects I ever saw was a line of Scarlet Invincible Sweet 
Peas and Tropasolum canariense (peregrinum) mixed 
together. 
Some gardeners, in order to have blooms of Sweet 
Peas as early as possible, sow in pots in August or early 
in September, keep their plants in a cold frame all the 
winter, and bring them on into flower in an ordinary 
greenhouse.— R. D. 
