656 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
June 17, 1898. 
planting out towards the end of March in a 
moderately-shaded situation, and in deep, 
well—prepared soil, where they may be 
m niched and watered. 
It need hardly be said thatwhere trouble 
is taken to obtain the best sorts, trouble 
in cultivation should not be spared also. 
It is only possible in such case to secure 
the finest flowers. Any one can grow 
Pansies as ordinary hardyflowers by grow¬ 
ing them in garden borders, and such 
culture is good enough for inferior sorts, 
but the best do merit the best of attention. 
Whe Rose Season.— It is so exceptional a 
^ circumstance to have a first-class Rose 
Exhibition in London so early as the 14th 
of June that no wonder it calls for special 
notice. We cannot yet fully ascertain 
how the great growers stand this season in 
relation to their flowers, but so far as all 
ordinary garden-grown Roses are concerned 
they will be more than beyond their best 
by that date. Roses have been blooming, 
if not finely at least with exceeding 
luxuriance and beauty. It is worthy of 
note also that in spite of the exceeding 
dryness of the season there is no excep¬ 
tional attack of aphis or maggot, nothing 
so far as we have learned that could not 
be grappled with by ordinary means. 
It does seem after all as if cold changes 
of temperature, fluctuations of bright sun¬ 
shine and cold storms and clouds were 
more productive of insect pests than con¬ 
tinuous warm drought. So far as relates 
to exhibition roses, the fact that the bulk of 
the blooms are the product of autumn buds 
places them in a different category from 
roses that are grown under ordinary con¬ 
ditions in gardens, and although the 
flowers can hardly be so large as usual, yet 
we may see them fuller and perhaps more 
beautiful than is ordinarily the case, even 
if they also be somewhat earlier. 
In any case that is our anticipation. No 
doubt our growers for exhibition have 
been watering freely and mulching heavily. 
Teas especially should be good. They like 
sunshine and warmth, and under existing 
climatic conditions should display their 
delicate tints and purity of complexion in 
the most perfect form. 
eas. —These most delicious of vegetables, 
evidently impressed with the necessity 
of being up to date, have this year in 
common with so many other things been 
breaking records, and the earliest maturing 
within the history of man almost seems to 
have marked the present year. It has 
been a somewhat dangerous thing for an 
editor to admit into his paper the mention 
of a particular Pea being ready at such a 
date, for immediately come floods of other 
communications that certain other varieties 
were ready at least one day earlier, if not 
some thirty-six hours. Practically, all 
this goes for little when it is found that it 
is not in this or that sort that special 
earliness has been evident, but rather in 
the general average, which has been from 
a fortnight to three weeks earlier than 
ordinarily is the case. 
Of course it is easy enough to assume 
that exceptional earliness is due to excep¬ 
tional precocity in newer kinds. That 
some gain has been secured in that respect 
we will not question, or that in relation to 
these first early sorts there has been great 
improvement. That is undoubtedly the 
case. Still remarkable earliness has not 
characterised one or two varieties only. It 
is general. That some of this precocity 
has been obtained at the expense of edible 
quality there can be no doubt, as the best 
of Peas eat somewhat dry. But as since 
the middle of April we have had no frosts 
that would harm Pea-bloom,and May having 
been both warm and frostless the great 
earliness of Peas is easily explained. Still 
such very favourable blooming times are 
rare. Peas as it is have suffered more 
from the usual sin of thick sowing than 
from actual drought. Some day, perhaps, 
growers will learn to treat them when 
sowing with more justice. 
trawberries.— There are few fruits with 
respect to which it seems more difficult 
to obtain anything like unanimity of 
opinion as to respective merits than of 
Strawberries. Why this should be so would 
be hard to understand were it not for the 
fact that these fruits seem to be more sus¬ 
ceptible to variations of soil than perhaps 
any others—and it may be but natural that 
such should be the case—as the fruits have 
closer contact with the soil than any others 
have. It is for that reason, we suppose, 
so difficult to fix what seems in one case 
the excellent quality and what in another 
is the very reverse. In any case that 
is so with a large number of varieties, and 
is not so with a few. 
On the whole, probably, few sorts are 
more reliable than are President, Sir 
Joseph Paxton, and Sir Charles Napier. 
Certainly few, if any, are more generally 
grown. But then we could name a dozen, 
even a score, of others which find favour 
in one place and denunciation in a dozen 
others. It is indeed strange, but'tis so. Just 
now we see our markets full of Strawberries. 
They are sold very cheaply in the streets 
and might obtain there perhaps better 
prices were they more agreeably presented 
to purchasers. There is nothing we should 
like to see better than the ordinary town 
dweller enjoying a fill of clean, sweet 
Strawberries, but on the street barrows, 
although the fruits are often wonderfully 
fine, yet are they usually set up in heaps 
and wearing an untidy, almost objection¬ 
able, appearance. 
Could these dealers be induced to pre¬ 
sent the fruits in neat cardboard or wicker 
baskets, carefully sampled and cleanly 
packed, how much more attractive and 
appetising they would be ! Shovelled with 
a scoop or by a hand that is none too clean 
into a scale and from thence into a paper 
bag, no wonder a somewhat hardened 
stomach is needed to render them appe¬ 
tising. How much room have we for 
amendment in this direction ! 
-- 
Mr. McCormick, lately foreman at Trentham, has 
has been engaged as gardener at Canford Manor, 
Wimborne, in succession to Mr. T. Crasp, who has 
gone into the market-growing business at Swansea. 
The North Lonsdale Rose and Pansy Show will be 
held at Ulverston on Friday, July 7th. instead of on 
the date originally fixed. 
Manchester Rose Show.— In consequence of the 
peculiar season the date upon which the above show 
should have been held has been changed, and it will 
take place in the gardens at Old Trafford, on 
Thursday, the 6th of July. 
The Carnation and Picotee Union. —We are re¬ 
quested to state that the annual meeting in Mr. 
Dodwell’s garden, at Oxford, is fixed for Tuesday, 
July 18th, instead of as previously arranged. The 
votes given for the alteration of the date were 
equally divided between the 15th and the 18th, but 
tents cannot be had for the earlier day. 
"Cottage Gardening." —We note with pleasure 
that the essay on this subject which won Mr. W. 
Egerton Hubberd’s prize in 1S70, and which its 
author Mr. W. E. Badger, of Birmingham, has kept 
carefully revised up to date has reached its twenty- 
seventh thousand. It deals with out-door cultivation 
only, and is a cheap and admirable little work to 
place in the hands of owners of small gardens. 
Messrs. Houlston & Sons are the publishers. 
Royal Gardener's Orphan Fund. —At the meeting of 
the committee, held on the 9th inst., the honorary 
secretary announced the receipt of the following 
donations since the previous meeting : Mr. F. M. 
Mould, £5 5s. ; Mr. John Wills £10 10s. ; Messrs. 
W. Thomson & Sons £1 10s. ; Mr. H. J. Jones £1 ; 
Young men at Ruxley Lodge, Esher, 10s. : and Mr. 
J. Perry, Crystal Palace Park, £1. 
Fine Strawberries.—The first home-grown straw¬ 
berries of the season were on sale at Mayhole, 
Ayrshire, on the 6th inst. The fruit was grown in 
the Gardens at Culzean Castle, and twelve selected 
berries weighed over one pound. 
Early Potatos in Scotland.—The first public sale of 
the season in the Girvan district took place on the 
1st inst., the crop being quite a fortnight earlier 
than last year. The quantity sold was over 200 
acres. The highest figure obtained was £36 per 
imperial acre, and the lowest £15 for a small lot. 
Prices on the average are similar to last year. The 
crop on the Girvan shore is the earliest since the 
beginning of the early potato trade. 
The New Park for Wakefield will be opened on 
July 6th. Mr. C. Millnes Gaskell presented to the 
town Lawe Hill and the plateau immediately- 
surrounding it, and to this has been added by 
purchase some twenty-eight acres, at a cost of 
£3.500. The cost (£3,000) of laying-out the park 
has been raised by donations, and entrance gates, 
lodge, band-stand and seats have all been given by 
public-spirited citizens. It is hoped that Holme 
Field, with its fourteen acres of magnificent grounds, 
may be eventually added, the present owner having 
generously offered the estate for £10,000, a sum 
greatly below its value. 
High Prices for Growing Peas,—At the first sale 
of this season's crop at the Swan Hotel, Stourport, 
last week about fifty-five acres were offered. There 
was a very large attendance of buyers, and the 
highest prices ever made in the district were 
realised, gj acres of Carter’s Lightning, grown by 
Mr. A. Tough, on the Kidderminster Corporatioij 
Farm at Oldington, made the remarkable price of 
£18 10s. per acre; whilst ga. 2r. 2op. of Leicester 
Defiance on the same farm made £13 5s. per acre. 
In the same week five acres of Leicester Defiance, 
grown by Mr. A. Horne, Clifford Bank, Stratford-on- 
Avon, realised £21 per acre, the highest price brought 
in the neighbourhood for very many years. 
The Condition of British Crops- —The Times on the 
8th inst. in a special report on the condition of the 
growing crops on June 1st states that taking the 
crops as a whole, they are in all cases but hops 
below the condition they were last year in England 
and Wales; but, on the other hand, the condition of 
all crops in Scotland surpasses the point they 
occupied in 1892. The cause of this in England 
and Wales was threefold—the difficulty of sowing in 
the autumn from wet land, the impossibility of 
getting- in seed in the spring through hard and 
dried-up soil, and the delay which took place in 
germination consequent upon the absence of rain. 
Destruction by Fire of the Horticultural Hall, 
Philadelphia —We regret to learn from American 
exchanges that the well-known Hall of the 
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society at Philadelphia 
was destroyed by fire on the 27th ult. One source 
of congratulation is that the most valuable portion 
of the Society’s library was not damaged either by 
fire or water, and that the valuable oil paintings of 
the founders of the Society were saved including 
the portraits of John Bartram, Caleb Cope, W’illiam 
L. Schaffer, J. E. Mitchell, Henry A. Dreer, A. W. 
Harrison and Miss Elizabeth Schaffer. The 
Directors met on the Monday following when it was 
decided to erect a new edifice on the old site, and if 
possible a more spacious and handsome one than 
that so unfortunately destroyed. 
New Plants Certificated in Ghent.— Certificates of 
Merit were awarded at a meeting in Ghent on the 
5th inst. to Mr. Em. De Cock for Cypripedium 
Lawrenceanum var. extra ; to the Establishment 
Horticole St. Dorothee for Encholirion roseum fol. 
aur. var. ; to Mr. Eugene Buysse for a seedling 
Canna; to Messrs. Edward Vervaet & Co. for 
.Erides crassifolia and Odontoglossum crispum 
guttatum ; to Mr. F. Desbois for Spiraea ruberrima ; 
to Messrs. Duriez Bros, for Cyperus ahernifolius 
