848 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
January 30, 1897. 
men made a remarkably fine display. The plants in 
pots were freely grown standards without wires, 
bearing 15 to 40 blooms each, and were arranged so 
that the blooms were never crowded or crushed. 
That of M. Fierens for 100 plants was arranged with 
great taste, and occupied a superficial area of about 
450 square feet. 
For 50 plants in pots M. Fierens had a very fine 
exhibit of about 300 square feet, M. O.de Meulenaere 
had another, but less attractive, group of dwarf, well- 
flowered plants, each bearing good blooms. Among the 
best blooms in these collections we specially noticed 
Charles Davis, Good Gracious, Mrs. C. Harman 
Payne, W. H. Lincoln, Edwin Molyneux, William 
Seward, Val. d’Andorre, Etoile de Lyon, Col. W. B. 
Smith, Mdlle. Therese Rey, Bonnie Dundee, Hairy 
Wonder, Calvat’s Australian Gold, Mme. Carnot, C. 
H. Curtis, &c. 
Cut blooms showed a very marked improvement 
since our last visit seven years ago. Local exhibits 
came from M. Fierens and M. de Meulenaere, while 
exhibitors from a distance and foreigners were 
represented by Messrs. Calvat, de Regdellet, Jones, 
and Cannell The N.C.S., for the first time in its 
existence, played the part of an exhibitor, and carried 
off the highest award in the power of the jury to 
grant— “ A Silver-Gilt Medal encadree." The blooms 
were collected by Mr. Bevan, to whom the best 
thanks of the N.C.S. are due; and were grown by 
the following members of the Society:—Messrs. J. 
Brookes, E. C. Jukes, Sandford, Turk, Martin, 
Skeggs, Bevan, and A. H. Page. They comprised 
large-flowered and Japanese Anemones, pompons, 
and a collection of Japanese ; one especially, a Mme. 
Carnot grown by Mr. Page, called forth a special 
mention by the jury. The exhibit was staged in 
glass bottles on a table, and interspersed with little 
pots of Adiantum and other Ferns, and formed an 
attractive feature of the show. A photograph of the 
exhibit was taken by order of the Ghent Society, and 
a copy was presented to each member of the N.C.S. 
deputation. 
It was decided to spend a day in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Brussels, and to visit the residence of Mr. 
de Wolfs, at Boitsfort. In that gentleman’s absence 
we were courteously received by his gardener, and 
allowed to view the four curvilinear houses in which 
his collection was housed. There were about 2,000 
well-flowered, disbudded specimens, carrying some 
excellent blooms. The varieties, mostly well-known 
exhibition kinds, were such as might be seen at the 
residence of any suburban English enthusiast. 
We returned to Brussels to catch the express to 
Paris and arrived shortly before midnight. There, 
as at Ghent, the exhibits are all got together the day 
before, or else very early the same morning, but the 
judging was somewhat differently managed, being 
performed on the morning of the opening of the show. 
The jury was divided into six sections,the first three 
being for Chrysanthemums and the remainder for 
miscellaneous exhibits of which there were a goodly 
number. Again the N.C.S. deputation formed a part 
of the jury, Mr. Harman Payne being appointed 
president of the second section. 
The show was held in the Palais de l’lndustrie, on 
the upper floor of which was a floor space of vast 
extent, but, unfortunately for the show as a whole, 
the hall was partitioned off into fourteen separate 
rooms. From an artistic point of view it was 
impossible for the Paris society to obtain anything 
like the fine general effect that we saw at Ghent, 
although many of the rooms were quite interesting 
exhibitions in themsevles. 
It is not the custom to award prizes in cash. 
Upwards of 150 prizes were allotted to the winning 
exhibits and these consisted of medals ranging from 
bronze to gold, and special prizes by the President 
of the Republic and the Minister of Agriculture. 
M. Felix Faure personally inspected the show on the 
first and second days, showing that horticulture 
receives patronage in France from those in high 
places. 
The attendance of visitors was surprising, for on 
the afternoon of the first day the crowd round the 
entrance extended half way across the road, and 
circulation throughout the show was well nigh 
impossible. Much the same thing occurred during 
the afternoons and evenings of the successive days. 
Groups were largely shown, the exhibits of several 
competitors being sometimes amalgamated, and of 
these there were twenty-five in all, some of great 
extent. The disposition of these groups was mostly 
square or oblong. The plants were all placed inside 
a wooden border raised a few inches from the level 
of the floor. The pots were hidden by being sunk in 
sawdust and the top covered with leaf-mould or moss. 
Dwarf plants varying from 2 ft. to 3 ft. in height 
appeared to find the greatest favour, and the blooms 
were in general of fair medium size and well finished 
Most of the varieties were Japanese, of American, 
French, and Italian origin, English kinds being by 
far in the minority. 
Cut blooms at Paris were numerous, but there was 
a want of uniformity in the quality, and in the 
staging. Some exhibitors used show boards, others 
glass bottles, while others staged their blooms on a 
flat slope, without the aid of cups and tubes, thus 
giving the blooms a flat and uncharacteristic 
appearance. To the English eye it is curious to 
judge a class for, say fifty varieties, and on counting 
them up to find eighty or ninety blooms; but this 
appears to be allowed for eflect if the competitor com¬ 
plies with the required number, the remainder, we 
were told, not being taken into account in the 
judging. 
In point of size there were some really fine flowers, 
but the subject of staging, in our opinion, requires 
attention, Messrs, de Vfimorin exhibited cut blooms 
with long stems and foliage, but the American plan 
of staging them in tall ornamental vases found no 
imitators among the French exhibitors. We are of 
opinion that where Chrysanthemums are shown for 
the purpose of displaying the individual perfection of 
the flowers no better method of setting them up has 
yet been tried than that of the old show board of 
proper dimensions with suitable cups and tubes. 
At this point Mr. Jones left, and the remaining 
members of the deputation proceeded to 
Amiens. The show there was purely a provincial 
one, and its chief characteristics were merely a 
reproduction, on a small scale, of those at the Paris 
show. In conclusion, we can safely affirm that there 
are now many capable exponents on the Continent of 
the art of Chrysanthemum growing for exhibition, 
and that they have reached a high degree of per¬ 
fection. Subordinate matters, time alone will ensure. 
■-- 
CULTURE OF TUBEROUS BEGONIAS. 
There has been so much said and written on this 
subject, that I presume most of your readers will 
think it worn quite threadbare; but knowing, at 
least, one instance in which for some few years a 
striking success has been achieved under a 
departure from the methods of culture generally fol¬ 
lowed, it may interest your readers to have the 
modus opevandi briefly described. I may add that 
a better display of these popular plants in the open 
air is inconceivable than my friend has in the height 
of the season. They are planted in comparatively 
large beds, which, as soon as they are cleared in the 
autumn, have a good dressing of well-decayed stable 
manure spread over them, and turned in roughly, 
leaving the soil as rough as possible through the 
winter that it may be acted upon by irost and wind, 
till planting time. They are then raked down, 
choosing favourable weather so as to secure a fine 
tilth. Planting has been done as early as the last 
week in March, in mild and dry weather, with the 
most satisfactory results ; but the first two weeks in 
April is most frequently the time chosen. About a 
fortnight or three weeks previous to planting the 
tubers are overhauled, and any which are quite dor¬ 
mant are placed in shallow boxes, cn an inch of 
cocoanut fibre, with which the crowns are slightly 
covered. They are then placed in a gentle heat, and 
syringed night and morning till they begin to start. 
They are then hardened off, and planted out with the 
rest, at a depth of from one and a half to two inches 
below the surface. The summer culture is the same 
as is generally followed, and the usual treatment is 
given in the matter of lifting and storing the tubers. 
The advantages of this system are the limited time 
and space occupied under glass. The plants come 
along steadily and naturally, giving little or no 
trouble till dry weather sets in, and they make 
better and stronger growth than those treated in the 
more usual fashion.— W. B. G. 
-- 
Locusts are taking their toll from South African 
farmers. The Bathurst and Pendle districts are 
suffering severely from large swarms. 
THE FLORA OF THE ALPS. 
The recent issue of the Linnean Society's 
“Transactions'’ (vol. v., pp. 119-227) contains a 
valuable contribution to plant-geography in general 
and alpine botany in pariicular. In a lecture at the 
Royal Geographical Society in J879, on the origin of 
the flora of the European Alps, the late John Ball 
told how a passion for mountain scenery had led 
him from youth onwards to pass much of his time in 
the Alps, and to visit, among other mountain dis¬ 
tricts, the Carpathians, the Pyrenees, the mountains 
of Southern Spain, and the hills of our own islands. 
“It was impossible to collect the plants of all these 
districts without being struck at once by the resem¬ 
blances and the contrasts presented by their respec¬ 
tive floras, and without being led to endeavour to 
account for them.’’ 
Selecting the southern side of the main chain of 
the Alps as having the richest and most varied flora, 
he divided it into fifty districts, and set himself to 
collect materials from published works and herbaria, 
but chiefly from his own repeated visits For nearly 
thirty years he worked at the collection and tabula¬ 
tion of the plants of these fifty districts, and their 
distribution on other European mountains. Un¬ 
fortunately, at his death, in 1889, the work was still 
incomplete, and for his conclusions from all this 
mass of material, we are entirely dependent on his 
lecture at the Geographical Society of ten years 
before. Mr. Thistleton Dyer undertook the editing 
of the table, which occupies one hundred pages of 
the Linnean Society’s “ Transactions,’’ and will be a 
valuable basis for further work. 
Without doubt, facts of the highest interest lie 
buried in its columns, but it will need a skilled 
botanist, and one who has studied Alpine flora well, 
to bring them to light. If the entries are treated as 
mere symbols, misleading or false conclusions will 
arise. In working in this way with all the plants of 
a flora, critical and doubtful species will, unless great 
care be taken, exercise an important influence on 
statistical results. A safer and simpler method of 
studying the relations of the local floras of large 
areas is the one recommended by Mr. C. B. Clarke 
in an address to the Linnean Society, to which we 
referred in “Natural Science’’ (vol. viii., p.366, 
June, 1896). It is the selection of a limited number 
of common and unmistakeable plants, and a careful 
elaboration of their distribution and habitat. 
According to Mr. Ball, the Alps, as a whole, con¬ 
tain 2,010 species of flowering plants, representing 
523 genera, and 96 natural orders. Compared with 
the floras of other regions, a large proportion of the 
species, more than two-fifths are found in all parts of 
temperate Europe, the majority extending to Siberia, 
and many even to North America. “ These are 
clearly plants that have a considerable power of 
adapting themselves to varied physical conditions, 
and whose vigorous organisation has made them vic¬ 
torious in the struggle for existence.’’ Of these, 
however, not one in twelve (actually only 65 in 792) 
can be reckoned as plants of the higher mountain 
region; most of them are common enough in the 
lower zone, but grow equally well in the woods and 
heaths and waste grounds of Middle Europe. Sub¬ 
tracting also some Mediterranean stragglers, we have 
a special Alpine flora of about 1,150 species. Of 
these “ more than one-seventh are endemic, rather 
more than half are common to the Alps and Pyrenees, 
just two-thirds are common to the Alps and Car¬ 
pathians, while rather more than one-sixth are com¬ 
mon to the Alps and the north of Europe and Asia." 
Compared with other mountain regions not imme¬ 
diately adjoining, the closest affinity is found to be 
with the mountains of Northern Asia, notwithstand¬ 
ing the vast interval of space and the great difference 
in climate. Of every twelve Alpine species, three are 
to be found in the Altai, but only two in the Cauca¬ 
sus, a mountain mass with a rich flora, and a much 
more favourable climate. Finally, a comparison 
between the A'pine and Arctic floras shows that only 
17 per cent, of the species of the former are found in 
the latter, in strong contrast to the 25 per cent., 
which are common to the Alps and the mountains of 
Northern Asia. 
The conclusion to which Mr. Ball was therefore 
inclined, is that the Alpine flora owes but little to a 
migration from the North. “ What,’’ he says, “ should 
we have to say of the remaining 83 per cent., includ¬ 
ing at least four generic types peculiar to the Alps, 
and a very large number not found in the Arctic 
