All the blues are apt to have a touch of pink or lilac somewhere on the blossom. The purest dark blue is Lord Nelson, not a Spencer. Flora Norton Spencer, the brightest blue, is not as large as Zephyr Spencer, a silvery blue. Horace Wright is a splendid indigo, but rarely produces more than two flowers on the stalk. Audrey Crier Spencer, May Malcolm Spencer and Lady Sarah Spencer are said to be new, deep blue varieties of enormous size.

The best mauve is Tennant Spencer.

Mrs. Walter Wright.

It seems to be the Spencer form of

Asta Ohn Spencer is the best Lavender. Florence Nightingale and Masterpiece, both Spencers, are good. Nettie Jenkins is the best Spencer form of that old favorite, Lady Grizel Hamilton, and is slightly hooded. Mrs. Charles Foster is a good Spencer heliotrope. Phenomenal is a creamy white with a picotee edge of purple. This section would not be complete without the old Duke of Westminster, a striking combination of violet and purple, suggestive of the Cattleya orchid.

The striped and flaked varieties are not much sought after. Helen Pierce is a pleasing mottled pale blue. Senator Spencer looks like a good thing gone wrong. Its colour scheme consists of mahogany streaks on a dirty white ground. Prince Olaf is a good combination of purple and lavender, and shows the marking well, as it is not ruffled. Aurora Spencer and America Spencer are both pleasing flaked varieties, the former an orange rose, the latter a rosy scarlet. The freakishness of Marjory Linzee is not in the colour, which is pink, but in the form. It frequently has double standards, but does not seem any more desirable on that account.

For the person who can only plant a single row of 90 or 100 feet, a packet of 20 seeds of each of the following 12 varieties will be found more than sufficient: (1) White, Etta Dyke Spencer. (2) Buff, Clara Curtis Spencer. (3) Cream Pink, Mrs. Routzahn Spencer. (4) Pink Edged, Elsie Herbert Spencer, (5) Pink, Countess Spencer. (6) Orange, Helen Lewis. (7) Scarlet, Queen Alexandra. (8) Crimson, King Edward Spencer. (9) Maroon, Douglas Unwin. (10) Blue, Lord Nelson. (11) Lavender, Asta Ohn. (12) Purple Edged, Phenomenal. If only four varieties can be grown, it will be found that Etta Dyke Spencer, Countess Spencer, Queen Alexandra and Asta Ohn will blend very well, either on the plants or when picked.

Moved by MAJOR H. J. SNELGROVE, seconded by J. P. JAFFRAY: "That a committee be named by the incoming President to consider the advisability of making application to the Provincial Government for a charter of incorporation for the Ontario Horticultural Association, said Committee to report at the next annual meeting of this Association." Carried.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME.

MAYOR G. R. GEARY. TORONTO.

A short time ago I had the privilege of attending a meeting of a Ratepayers' Association in the City of Toronto, and of presenting two medals and a large cup won in competition for lawns and gardens in that part of the city. Great interest was taken in this competition, as evidenced at that meeting, and I better realized

I have seen many fine

the work this Association is doing in the City of Toronto. gardens, but the best example of what can be done in a limited space is the one owned by Mr. George Baldwin in this city. If we take a pride in our city it is our duty to do what we can to beautify it. In no other way can outside decoration be made so effective as in the improvement of home surroundings. The view of the home from the streets, no matter how beautiful the inside may be, is what the public see. It must be a source of greater pride for the owner to realize that his house is one of the city's beauty spots. I would like to see more horticultural associations and a larger membership in this city, if that were possible. I don't mean to say that the present Society is not doing the work-it is a good one, and I belong to it myself and am proud of my connection with it. There are 420 miles of streets in this city, and it is impossible for a limited membership to do the work that ought to be done. There should be at least 10,000 active members in the Queen City.

We have been most unfortunate in losing a very estimable and capable officer of late in Mr. James Wilson, who was our Superintendent of Parks; he was a man of large ideas and with the ability to carry them out, his heart was wrapped up in his work, and it will remain a lasting credit to himself and the City of Toronto. His plans looked to the future and they will be taken up by his successor, whoever he may be, and we trust that he will be able to follow along the line of the late Mr. Wilson. It is difficult for a city to branch out from its swaddling clothes and take on man's estate and attend to the little ethical matters of beauty and adornment which we all desire to see attended to. It is a very good thing for the Province that we find men and women so wrapped up in things in which there is no monetary gain but just the desire to please themselves and others. We all love our town and desire to see it beautiful and reaching upward with other places, and we welcome the efforts of this Association in their work. To you who come from outside of Toronto, we welcome you heartily, and desire that your visit here may be a pleasant one. We are glad to see you, and pleased that we have been able to afford you accommodation for your meetings, and I trust that you will continue to hold your splendid Annual Convention among us.

The Mayor's address of welcome was heartily received.

W. A. BROWNLEE: I would ask Mr. Dockray what he would do if he had nothing but sandy loam soil for sweet peas? Is it possible to plant them in the same location every year, or is the soil so deteriorated by the extraction of the constituent parts in the growth of the sweet peas that it is not well to plant them in the same place a second time? Can you successfully plant sweet peas in the same place in a trench if you use a fertilizer?

MR. DOCKRAY: You should dig the soil out, no matter what kind it is, and mix it with wel! rotted manure; if the soil is originally rich, so much the better; if it is not rich, the results will not be so satisfactory. If the soil is poor, the best way would be to carry it away, get some good soil and mix it with well rotted manure. Regarding the second question, the soil does deteriorate after the first year; it need not be taken out the second year, but manure can be mixed with it to make it rich again. I can grow sweet peas successfully on the same soil for more than one year, but I enrich it heavily every fall.

A MEMBER: I have had varying success with sweet peas and would like to know if Mr. Dockray has tested all these varieties himself and had success with them, and from whom he procured the seed.

T. D. DOCKRAY: Where I do not speak from my own knowledge I say, "It is said" that so and so are good. I have procured the seeds from local seedsmen, from several of the good men in the States, and from a great number of places in England, and on some occasions from the originators. My experience extends over eight years, although I have not taken any particular notes on it.

J. H. BENNETT: You have had better results than I have had. The species Mr. Dockray names are all very fine in their way, if you get them to grow. You can buy high-priced seeds, but, in many cases, they won't come up. If you want flowers for blooming, buy the ordinary kind of sweet peas and you will have far more flowers, without using artificial fertilizers.

THE PRESIDENT:

Tulips.

I cannot agree with Mr. Bennett. In England they use fertilizers; unless you have been there you don't know to what perfection sweet peas grow as to size, colour, length and vigour of stem. I like very year to grow a dozen new varieties; I have grown 50 and 60-every variety of sweet pea produced. There is a great deal of pleasure in watching new varieties come into bloom. If I were to make out a list of the best twenty in the last few years, half would be new varieties. They are an immense improvement over the old. No one should be deterred from trying new varieties because some have not had much success with them. There are always enough flowers to repay the trouble.

J. H. BENNETT:

I do not want to be understood for a moment as depreciating the fancy kind. We are here to legislate in the interests of the general public, who want to get the best flowers at the least expense. If we recommend new varieties to the ordinary horticulturist and they prove a failure we are not working in the interests of the general public. They are all right for people who have money to experiment with. It is a mistake to let the impression go abroad that anybody and everybody can grow the varieties named in Mr. Dockray's paper.

GEO. VICKERS: I have enjoyed hearing Mr. Dockray's paper, although I do not agree with everything he has said. I have grown sweet peas for twenty-five years, and can remember when the only variety obtainable was the common sweet pea. I have seen sweet peas in the Old Country, and they have better size, substance and longer stem than here, which I attribute to the climate. So far as fertilizers go, I have had experience in planting sweet peas for four consecutive years and each year have won first and second prizes for them. In Barrie we can produce sweet peas as good as anywhere in Ontario, as far as I have seen. Like Mr. Bennett, I sent to England, to Philadelphia, to New York and Chicago, and different places for advertised varieties, rare varieties, high grade, low priced, and so on; I paid high prices for them and I found that in the city of Toronto you can get all the varieties you want and at half the price.

JAS. H. Ross: While it is all right for the experts to tell us how to grow them, our own experience will teach us more than anything else. I have grown sweet peas for eight or ten years, although I do not pretend to grow them with very much skill, and generally have some of the best sweet peas in town. They do not receive much attention. A quantity of manure is put below the soil, liquid manure used for the first part of the season, they are watered well, and grow nicely, four to the stem. I have had seed from the Old Country, and from Philadelphia, and I have secured quite as good from Toronto seedsmen. I have grown them in the same trench for three years and have always had success. I plant 6 inches apart. They are very successful in that way, and I have a very fine display year after year. It is generally supposed that we cannot transplant sweet peas. That is a mistake; I have an island up the lake, about 12 or 13 miles away, and this year I took plants out of the garden up there and planted them in a trench and they grew very nicely, and in the first week in October I plucked some flowers off those transplanted plants. They can be transplanted very successfully.

T. D. DOCKRAY: Looking over the list of colours, I find that nine out of twelve can be obtained from at least three seedsmen in Toronto, for 10 cents an ounce package. The other three if they cannot be obtained in Toronto can be got in the States. I have not selected as the principal ones in my list the expensive or the doubtful ones.

G. W. TEBBS: What would you do to promote growth of stalk? Some of the varieties have very short stalks, making the blooms of practically no use as cut flowers; is there anything that can be done to stimulate them?

T. D. DOCKRAY: I know of nothing that will do that; I have eliminated those altogether and grow only the ones that have four on a good, long stalk. Some of the most desirable combination colours, have unfortunately, a short stalk.

GEO. BALDWIN: I notice that the sweet peas that took the $5,000 prize in the Old Country were awarded it for the extra number of blooms and the long stalk. agree with Mr. Dockray in one thing that we should eliminate short stalk varieties. G. W. TEBBS: Do you remember the name of them?

GEO. BALDWIN: Ellen Lewis.