112 



Bulletin 128. 



flowers. It has a bad sound. To many people it is well-nigh 

 sacrilegious to talk of ' ' improving nature. ' ' Strictly speaking, 

 we cannot create ; we can only select from the forms that nature 

 gives us, and keep what we like. Whoever declares that wild 

 flowers are intrinsically more beautiful than cultivated ones, and 

 insists on having dahlias just as they are in nature, must move 



28. — Viridiflora. The green 

 dahlia. 



to Mexico, and will then find that the forms are not stereotyped. 

 Nature can print ' ' dahlia " in as many kinds of type as our best 

 publishing houses can. Dahlias grow wild in Mexico in sandy 

 places, at five or seven thousand feet above the sea level, know 

 nothing of frost, and are used to a long dry season. They do vary 

 wonderfull}- in Mexico and they are bound to vary even more so 

 in New York. The dwarfing of dahlias is a perfectly legitimate 

 hing. Nature does it, and we have a perfect right to prefer some 



