May 9th, 1885. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
563 
1885. DAHLIAS. 1885. 
DOUBLE POMPONE VARIETIES. 
A grand collection, consisting of the varieties most 
showy in the borders, and those best adapted for 
cutting. 
SINGLE VARIETIES. 
The finest collection in the world, including 12 
beautiful new varieties of present season. 
Gardening is the purest of human pleasures, and the greatest 
refreshment to the spirit of man.”— Bacon. 
CACTUS AND OTHER DAHLIAS. 
A most interesting group, consisting of several 
colours. All are line decorative plants and beautifully 
fitted for cutting. 
DOUBLE SHOW AND FANCY VARIETIES. 
All the leading varieties in cultivation, including 
the new ones of 1885. 
Triced descriptive illustrated Catalogue may he had Gratis 
and Tost Free upon application. 
THOMAS S. WARE, 
DALE FARM NURSERIES, 
TOTTENHAM, LONDON. 
DANIELS BROS.’ 
SPECIAL LIST OP CHOICE 
mm ens 
FOR PRESENT SOWING. POST FREE. 
We can highly recommend the following choice 
Flower Seeds as being really fine strains and well 
worthy of cultivation :— 
per pkt.—s. d. 
Auricula, choicest Alpine.10 
Antirrhinum majus, splendid mixed.0 6 
Aquilegia glandulosa (true), splendid . 1 6 
Aquilegia ccerulea hybrida, very fine . 1 G 
Aquilegia, splendid mixed, single and double. 0 0 
Begonia, Tuberous-rooted hybrids, very fine 
mixed .Is. C>d. & 2 6 
Calceolaria hybrida, finest tigred and spotted 
varieties, very choice . Is. Gd., 2s. Gd., & 5 0 
Carnation, splendid double, from stage flowers, a 
remarkably fine strain .2s. Gd. & 5 0 
Carnation, Perpetual or Tree.2s. Gd. & 5 0 
Carnation, choicest yellow varieties . 3 6 
Canterbury Bells, new double, rose . 10 
Canterbury Bells, new double, white.0 6 
Canterbury Bells, new double, blue . 0 6 
Canterbury Bells, single, pure white. 0 3 
Canterbury Bells, single, splendid mixed . 0 G 
Cineraria hybrida grandiflora, a brilliant strain 
of large and beautiful flowers ... Is. Gd., 2s. Gd., & 6 0 
Cineraria hybrida, new dwarf, a beautiful class 
of dwarf-growing, large-flowered varieties . 2 6 
Delphinium formosum, splendid dark blue. 0 4 
Delphinium nudicaule, scarlet, fine. 1 0 
Delphinium, splendid mixed hybrids . 0 6 
Gloxinia hybrida grandiflora, Daniels’ superb 
mixed, beautiful large-flowered varieties Is. Gd. & 2 6 
Hollyhock, Chafer’s fine double.16 
Hollyhock, new large-flowered single, very fine, mixed 
colours.16 
Mignonette, Golden Queen.0 6 
Mignonette, “ Machet,” splendid for pots . 1 0 
Mignonette, Victoria giant red, new, fine . 1 0 
Mimulus, Daniels’ large-flowered. 1 0 
Pansy, Daniels’ Show and Fancy, splendid . 1 6 
Pansy, Daniels’ Prize Blotched, magnificent varietis, 
Is. Gd. & 2 6 
Pansy, Daniels’ Improved Striped, very fine . 10 
Pentstemon, iu m newest sorts, very choice. 1 6 
Petunia hybrida grandiflora, magnificent class 
splendid mixed.Is. Gd. & 2 6 
Picotee, splendid double, mixed . 2s. Gd. & 5 0 
Polyanthus, choicest Gold-laced . Is. Gd. & 2 6 
Primrose, brilliant hybrids, mixed. Is. Gd. & 2 6 
Primula, Daniels’ Crimson King, magnificent deep 
crimson-scarlet ... .3 6 
Primula, Chiswick Red, splendid.2 6 
Primula alba magnifica, very fine.2 6 
Primula, Daniels’ choicest mixed. Is. Gd. ... 2 6 
Pyr ethrum, new single-flowered hybrids, fine varieties, 
mixed. 1 6 
Stock, Brompton, giant scarlet. Gd. & 1 0 
Sweet "William, Daniels’ Prize. Gd. & 1 0 
Viola, bedding, choice mixed .1 0 
Wallflower, single, blood-red .0 3 
Wallflower, single, golden-yellow.0 4 
Wallflower, single, choice mixed.0 3 
Wallflower, double German, 6 superb varieties ... 2 0 
Wallflower, double German, choice mixed ... Gd. & 1 0 
omuls mm., 
THE ROYAL NORFOLK SEED ESTABLISHMENT, 
NORWICH, 
Cjjf toktkg ISklft. 
SATURDAY, MAY 9th, 1885. 
Gardener Exhibitors. —With the opening of 
the Flower Show Season there habitually crops 
np reference to the not uninteresting question as 
to the relative value of gardeners who exhibit at 
shows and those who do not. It is true that the 
great bulk of gardeners are either exhibitors or 
desire to he. They find in shows a stimulus to their 
work that, if not essential, yet is beneficial. They 
are brought into contact not only with other 
gardeners, and hence learn to comprehend the 
value of other men’s knowledge as compared with 
their own, hut they also see other growers’ pro¬ 
duce, and realize how far they themselves are 
lacking in cultural ability or otherwise. Every 
good gardener desires to place himself culturally 
in a better position if possible, hut the greatest 
stimulus to exertion in that direction certainly is 
found in competitions, because the credit of beat¬ 
ing is, after all, so great an honour that none can 
resist the desire to possess it. 
The stay-at-home gardener who never exhibits 
may claim the virtue that by so refraining he 
never does anything shady, but we fear he 
may also he regarded as claiming a virtue 
which is more contingent upon the quality of 
his produce than upon his inherent honesty. 
He would show gladly enough if he could 
do so with any prospect of success, but he has 
not been stimulated to work to that end, hence 
his products are best left at home. Thero 
are not a few admirable gardeners who are 
absolutely interdicted from showing by their 
employers. Of course, all such employers have 
a right to do as they like with their own, but in 
the end they not only harm themselves hut their 
gardeners too. 
We are not now discussing the question 
whether competitions and exhibitions are essential 
to the progress and welfare of horticulture. 
Something on that head may he said on both 
sides, hut the preponderating argument, without 
doubt, would be in the affirmative. What we 
want to demonstrate, if need be, though it seems 
hardly necessary, both to certain employers who 
are jealous of their gardeners becoming exhibitors, 
and to certain gardeners themselves, is that com¬ 
petitions and flower shows have become estab¬ 
lished horticultural institutions, and as such are 
now interwoven so closely with our gardening life 
and work that they cannot in any way he wisely 
ignored. The public look to these as tests of 
gardening liberality and knowledge, and if they 
fail to find certain members or patrons of the 
gardening fraternity in the fray, their natural 
inference is that they are either lacking public 
spirit or professional knowledge. 
In showing, it is not given to all to win, because 
some have greater knowledge than others, or 
greater facilities, or more advantages than others. 
But it is not the less very often the case that 
the man who does not alwaj’s win is a cultivator 
of the most meritorious order, because he nearly 
wins, perhaps, from his fellow competitors, though 
his appliances are few. All the greater honour 
to him for such efforts ; they inevitably meet with 
a fitting reward later. Others’who are always in 
the background have, perhaps, in them too much 
of the Micawber spirit; they arc rather waiting 
for luck to turn up than striving to secure it. 
Happily these are very few indeed. 
But what wo chiefly wish to say on this 
matter of exhibiting is that it is not only our 
experience, hut that of most having experience, 
that the better the exhibitor, or rather the 
better the produce any exhibitor shows, the 
better all-round gardener is he, and the more 
earnest are his efforts to discharge his garden 
duties. It is a delusion to imagine that such a 
man studiously neglects some part of his duties 
that he may devote all the more time to those 
few from which he derives his chief exhibition 
subjects. We have found everywhere that good 
gardens, good gardeners, and good exhibitors 
are joined. Exhibiting creates an interest of 
its own in gardening that is valuable in so far 
that it counteracts that tendency on the part 
of gardeners to become isolated and, perhaps, 
selfish. We find gardens divided, as a rule, by 
considerable distances. Gardeners are thus 
necessarily thrown very much to themselves, 
and they are apt in that enforced isolation to 
regard their products as perfect, a species of 
egotism which exhibiting in competition soon 
knocks out of them. 
Then in myriads of matters an isolated 
gardener is apt to become dull and his percep¬ 
tive faculties blunted. He is not only in danger 
of becoming egotistical, but also priggish or 
dictatorial, and entiroly fails to keep himself 
abreast of horticultural progress. The exhibiting 
gardener, on the other hand, always goes about 
with his eyes open. He believes in good things 
when he sees them, whether new or old, and 
secures them for his employer’s benefit quite as 
much as for his own. His better class cultiva¬ 
tion, as seen in his efforts to obtain good exhibits, 
permeates all his garden work and practice, 
hence his crops are the better all round. Nay, 
even the education picked up in the show tent 
and the little inspirations he feels in decorative 
efforts re-act upon him for good in every way, so 
that the better exhibitor is emphatically the 
better gardener. 
-<- 
The Season. —The weather prophets have a 
grudge against the season. They have been 
defrauded, to some extent, out of the customary 
Blackthorn winter, and are angry to find that their 
prognostications are at fault. Happily, the world 
at large, and especially the whole army of gardeners 
and fruit growers, can afford to rejoice that.weather 
prophecies have gone wrong. The Blackthorn 
has bloomed most profusely, and, as a rule, the 
cold which accompanies it should have been of 
the keenest. So far from that being the case, the 
weather was of the mildest. With the Black¬ 
thorn came in the Plum, and both have bloomed 
marvellously, both have shed their bloom, and 
both, thanks to a glorious time, have set 
wondrous crops full of promise. It may be that 
after all, in one sense, the prophets were right, 
for we had some unpleasant frosts and much 
cold, trying wind ere the Blackthorn bloom 
expanded. The weather might have been a little 
too early, or the bloom a little too late, hut in any 
case we are the gainers, and shall be pleased 
enough if the traditional Blackthorn winter will 
henceforth always display the same precocity. 
It is a fact that the birds have proved more 
injurious to the fruit crop than has the weather 
so far. In some gardens these pests have done 
much injury to buds and Gooseberry bloom, in 
others they have refrained from harm altogether. 
In any case, the promise yet is truly magnificent, 
and such as to arouse feelings of intense thank¬ 
fulness that the barren fruit years seem now to 
have been arrested, and that bounteous ones are 
