l^Jolioijentron ^ocictp ^oted, 
Extract from a Letter of Professor Bayley Balfour to Mr. C. C. Eley. 
Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 
5i/i May, 1917. 
“ It is most kind of you to send to me Vol. I., No. 1, 1916, of the 
Rhododendron Society Notes, which I have read through from cover to 
cover with great interest and instruction. 
I congratulate you and your Society upon the beginning of your records. 
These reports from different growers will be of perennial interest. How one 
wishes that there were such dicta from the earliest days of Rhododendron 
cultivation ! It is only by knowing what plants are in cultivation in different 
gardens, the history of them, and the results of the observations of the growers, 
that Botany and Horticulture will obtain data for really knowing Rhododendrons. 
The gardener is the great practical oecologist from whom scientific botanists in 
the past have learned far less than they ought and might. That this is so is 
in a measure the consequence of the want of systematic record by gardeners of 
their experiences. In the pages of current gardening periodicals a few of these 
are given to the world but in too many cases the most acute observers are the 
least disposed to appear before the public through these channels ; and then what 
a labour it is to search through these peiiodicals for information ! I think the 
method of your ‘ Notes ’ is particularly happy in the freedom it offers to your 
members to write about cultivation and to give their opinions. The formality 
attaching even to a paragraph in a periodic^ often negates the expression of a 
view or the statement of an observation. Your plan removes formality and is 
more of the nature of a conversation between friends interested in the growing 
of the same group of plants. 
I am sure that you will have the blessings of posterity ” 
I.B.B. 
150 
