118 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
Oet. 2.5th, 1884. 
45 guineas in big sums that fell into the hands of few 
growers. This sum, too, was about one-third of the 
the entire amount offered. Now, to bring about that 
division of the schedule so as to give every exhibitor a 
fair chance, we would suggest that;, in the first place, 
the Kingdom be divided into districts—North, Midland, 
and South—including England, Wales, and Scotland. 
The divisions should be fairly equal, and any climatic 
advantages or disadvantages would be fairly well 
balanced. In each of these divisions there might be 
classes of twelve, nine, and six dishes respectively, 
and as the twelves would constitute the premier ones 
of the show, a Champion prize might well be added to 
the Division prize for the very best dozen kinds out of 
the selected first-prize lots. In that way alone the 
desired division of the honours would be seemed, and 
and the Champion prize would be one to covet and 
honourable to obtain. 
To carry out this suggestion would require some 
modification of the present prizes, but the show 
would not suffer, whilst the larger number of classes 
would certainly ensure a greater number of entries. 
Then, following on the admirable example set at 
the recent Health Exhibition Potato competition of 
having classes for garden, field, and late keeping kinds; 
similar ones, say, for six dishes each, open to all 
comers, might well be established, because interest 
would attach to the selections sent in these classes 
from diverse parts] of the kingdom. Beyond beauty 
and other features the judges could farther make the 
awards upon the ground of special fitness in the 
selections for the purpose named. The classes for 
three dishes of white or coloured kinds, round or 
kidney, especially as duplicated this year, are montonous 
and uninteresting, and the large sums offered in 
connection with them might well be more usefully 
applied. A class for the encouragement of new kinds 
might be offered to raisers with advantage, the sorts 
to have been either grown that season at Chiswick, 
or to have been not more than one season in 
commerce. 
As there are still many popular American kinds in 
commerce, a class for nine kinds might be established, 
and farther a similar one for British raised kinds, but 
competitors should not be allowed to show in both, 
because there should be no incentives to a general 
scramble for prize-money. Classes of nine dishes 
and six dishes might well be established for : non¬ 
prize winners of previous years, so as to encourage 
the timid, who would like to exhibit, but dread defeat. 
Einally, very high standards should be created for 
future novelties, for a kind that is either but the- re¬ 
production of an old one, or is not better, is in no way 
meritorious, and merits no honour. The suggestions 
thus made will we trust receive due consideration at 
the proper season. 
THE BRITISH MAIDEN-HAIR 
FERN. 
Ik the British Islands the distribution of the 
Maiden-hair is distinctly of a western type. In 
England its head-quarters are in the counties of Devon 
and Cornwall, in which it occurs in many localities, 
affecting low sea caves and the clefts of coast 
rocks; it was formerly abundant in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Ilfracombe, but of late years has become 
very scarce there, and can only be obtained if the 
collector is sufficiently enthusiastic to allow himself 
to be let down over the cliffs by a rope. We do not 
think it advisable to give detailed descriptions of the 
localities recorded for this beautiful fern, which is 
already in danger of becoming exterminated, owing to 
the ravages of collectors, if, indeed, it has not already 
disappeared from some of its localities. It has also 
occurred in Dorset, and is recorded for North 
Somerset, although this is doubtful, as it is said that 
the leaves of a flowering-plant, Thalictrum saxatile, 
have been mistaken for it at Cheddar. 
On the coast of Glamorganshire it is, or was, 
abundant; there is a specimen in the British Museum 
Herbarium, collected in June, 1773, at Cardiff, from 
“ a cliff called Nine-acre Cliff, half a mile from Porth 
Kerrig Church, in the face next the sea, where a 
petrifying water falls down, generally in places not 
accessible without much difficulty.” On some parts 
of the Glamorganshire coast it grows very luxuriously, 
for m i n g a green tapestry on the face of the cliff, and 
sometimes within reach of the spray. It has long 
been known as growing in the Isle of Man: other 
English counties have been recorded for it, but its 
occurrence in them has not been authenticated, and 
it is stated that in more than one instance young 
plants of the Bracken have been mistaken for the 
Maiden-hair ! It is, apparently, absent from Scotland, 
although it has been recorded from one or two stations 
in that country. In Ireland it is very local, occurring 
chiefly, if not entirely, in the West; the Isle of Arran 
and the Burren mountains, are its oldest and best- 
known localities, it having been recorded from Arran 
by Lhwyd previous to 1699. It has also occurred in 
various places of the County Clare, from Connemara, 
and Sligo; and it is reported to have been found in 
a cave near the Giants’ Causeway, Antrim. The 
Maiden-hair of Burren and Arran is very luxuriant, 
and often has the pinnules more deeply cut than in 
the ordinary form of the species .—European Ferns. 
-—— 
SIR TREVOR LAWRENCE ON 
GARDENING. 
At the recent opening of the autumn session of the 
Bichmond Athena3um,Sir Trevor Lawrence,Bart.,M.P., 
delivered the opening address, his subject being “ A 
Gossip on Gardens and Gardening,” from which we 
take the following extracts from The Richmond and 
Twickenham Times. 
One of the first things which foreigners say when 
they come to this country is, not that there are 
gardens in England, but that the whole of England 
is a garden ; and really they must feel that that was 
hardly an exaggeration when they compared the 
country as they saw it in England with other countries 
on the Continent. He did not suppose there ever 
was a people who had so keen a love of gardening as 
the English. Wherever they went in the world they 
found English and Scotch gardeners doing good work. 
Now, taste was a very delicate subject to touch 
upon; but at the same time, as one who was a lover 
of gardens, he felt bound to protest against the fashion 
for ribbon and carpet bedding which had displaced 
much that was lovely in our gardens. Let those who 
had a fancy for these things look at an old-fashioned 
garden, and if they did not say that the latter was 
infinitely the more beautiful he should be very much 
.surprised. He thought there was to some extent now 
a reaction against that absurdity. If they looked at 
one of the ribbon or carpet beds in Hyde Park they 
would see that an elaborate process of trimming and 
pinching and poking was going on continually, and 
nothing had the opportunity of growing as Nature 
would incline it to do. Anything more unnatural it 
would be impossible to produce. He thought they 
were perhaps hardly aware, when they walked round 
their gardens, what an immense debt of gratitude 
they owed to people who had brought most beautiful 
productions to decorate their gardens from almost 
every quarter of the globe. They got so accustomed 
to what they called common flowers—such as, for 
instance, the Pelargonium, which came . from the 
Cape of Good Hope; the Heliotrope, a Peruvian 
plant; and the Dahlia, from Mexico—that they 
forgot how many of them had been gathered together 
with great labour from every part of the world. 
That led him to think of that which had to do, not 
with taste, but with fashion in gardens. His 
experience was that if they wanted to ruin anything 
completely, they should get fashion and fashionable 
people to take it up. Just now the beautiful but rather 
stiff and comparatively formal double Dahlias were out 
of fashion, and were very seldom seen. We had instead 
got single Dahlias. The other day he was talking to 
a nurseryman—one of course who had an eye to the 
main chance—and he told him that single Dahlias 
had passed then- day. He explained that by saying 
that they had been very fashionable, but now they 
were going out of fashion, and soon we should see 
them no more. He then went on to say it was 
known to almost everybody that nearly all the 
double flowers that we saw were the results of 
hybridizing. It was impossible to exaggerate the 
great debt we owed to gardening skill in that matter. 
Take such a common thing as the ordinary garden 
Pelargonium. The petals of the one he had in his coat 
would have fallen long ago if it had been a single 
Pelargonium, and they all knew -the care taken by 
people at Covent Garden to gum in the petals of the 
single Pelargonium, so that, in addition to the double 
variety, they got that permanence in the flower which 
they did not get in the single variety. There were 
ten or a dozen natural species of Dahlia, but almost 
all our double Dahlias came from one species. With 
regard to the exploits of gardeners, he did not think 
anything had been more gratifying as an instance of 
skill in introducing a plant which was an inhabitant 
of one country into another, than the services ren¬ 
dered by Kew Gardens in introducing quinine-bearing 
plants into India. Three of the great staples which 
produced the food of mankind—the Potato, the Vine, 
and the Coffee plant—were attacked by very serious 
diseases. Any one who would devote intelligent 
attention, such as M. Pasteur had devoted to the 
diseases of animals, to the diseases of plants, would 
perhaps make a discovery which would benefit the 
whole human race. 
Sir Trevor said that his own particular hobby was 
the cultivation of Orchids, which were, he thought, 
on the whole, the most interesting of the great 
botanical families. It was impossible to make any 
reference to Orchids without having one’s mind 
brought to the writings of Mr. Darwin, who described 
with extraordinary lucidity some of the many con¬ 
trivances by which Orchids were fertilized. Of late 
years the taste for these plants had wonderfully 
developed. He knew one importer who employed a 
staff of fourteen collectors in different parts of the 
world. They were nearly all Germans, as he found 
them more easily satisfied and more sober than 
Englishmen. He paid them from £75 to £150 a year 
and all expenses. He paid all outgoings while they 
were away, and then- pay accumulated in their 
absence. Each one cost him in wages and expenses 
about £1,200 a year. Then he had at his establish¬ 
ment two acres of glass devoted entirely to Orchids, and 
employed fifty persons, whose wages amounted to 
about'£80 a week, so that he must be spending about 
£19,000 a year on collectors and wages only, not 
allowing anything for coals, rates and taxes, interest 
on capital, and other charges. 
As to the value of Orchids, he had known £250 to 
be given for a single plant. That was for an imported 
plant which, perhaps, had not cost the importer more 
than 5s-., but it turned out to be of rare and extreme 
beauty. He could understand a large sum being 
given for a hybrid Orchid, which, perhaps, could only 
be obtained of the person who had produced it, but 
the eafee was different with imported plants, for one 
which was imported to-day could be imported again 
to-morrow, so that a plant which fetched £100 to-day 
might not be worth a hundred pence to-morrow. Sir 
Trevor then gave, with the assistance of some 
diagrams, a very interesting account of the fertiliza¬ 
tion of Orchids. 
LUMINOUS WOOD. 
A piece of luminous wood was recently received by 
the writer of this note, with a request for an explana¬ 
tion of the curious phenomenon. The wood was part 
of an old decaying stump, and when opened in a dark 
room the whole was enveloped in a pale phosphores¬ 
cent light. A brief note on the subject may be of 
interest, as the phenomenon has frequently been 
observed. A few years ago, when describing a new 
Agaric from the Andaman Islands, our veteran fungo- 
logist, the Eev. M. J. Berkeley, remarked:—“The 
cause is at present, we believe, quite unknown. Even 
the opportunities of examining the large Olive tree 
Agaric of the South of Europe have been without 
result. The only instances of luminosity which have 
occurred at home have been confined to Mycelia in 
conjunction with decaying wood or fermenting leaves.” 
The Agaric in question is called Agaricus (Pleurotus) 
Emerici; the pileus, or cap, is about half an inch 
across, attached behind without any stem, either 
nearly flat or helmet-shaped, and emitting a most 
brilliant light; the entire substance being luminous. 
The luminosity is the most brilliant of any known 
species. Mr. Berkeley remarks that as the specimens 
are scarcely fully developed it is no question of decom¬ 
position, as in the case of the decaying wood or 
fermenting leaves. Returning now to the luminous 
wood, it seems clear that the mycelium of some fungus 
