A TALK ABOUT DAHLIAS. 



To very many people it will be news and scarcely credible news 

 that dahlias have any freedom and grace of form, or any delicacy 

 and modesty of color. The prejudice against them may never 

 again be as strong as it is now. They are associated with a period 

 of formalism which found its expression in highly artificial camel- 

 lias, and in carnations from which the fringes, — their natural 

 beauty — had been painfully removed by a long process of plant- 

 breeding. The era of hoop-skirts was the time of the dahlia 

 furore ; and what a tyrant the dahlia was! It is still remembered 

 as a flower the size of a croquet ball, almost as hard in outline, 

 and with colors sometimes equally coarse and gaudy. How are 

 the mighty fallen ! The reaction against formal flowers carried 

 the popular enthusiasm towards the loose, free, and fantastic 

 Japanese chrysanthemums. Perhaps the deserted idol felt that the 

 populace had gone off to strange gods. But I like to think that 

 the poor dahlias breathed a sigh of relief when their convent days 

 were over. They revelled in their neglect. It was bad enough 

 to have their natural inclinations snubbed and suppressed. But 

 it was very hard, after a period of success, to be accused of in- 

 herent primness and stifiness when those qualities were merely 

 the result of their rigid system of education. The fault was not 

 with the dahlias, but with the single standard of beauty that was 

 in the minds of men. As a matter of fact the dahlia is probably 

 able to express itself in as many wonderful and indescribable forms 

 as the chrysanthemum is. But the dahlia has not had the chance. 

 Chrysanthemums have been in cultivation, it is said, for over two 

 thousand years. The double forms of the dahlia are less than a 

 century old, and the so-called "cactus dahlias" which are going 

 to save the whole race by their freedom and informality prac- 

 tically date from 1879, when the first cactus dahlia was exhibited 

 and pictured in England. We already have many forms (Figs. 



