46 FLORA HTSTORICA. 



time of flowering is of much longer duration, since 

 it generally commences to expand its corollas in 

 July, which follow each other in succession until 

 the frost forbids our hardiest flowers to shine : but 

 as the flowers are placed singly on branching stems, 

 like those of the common Pink, they never present 

 that fine mass of colour which the large umbel of 

 the Sweet- William exhibits, and they are entirely 

 deficient of the fragrance for which the Pink is so 

 much admired : yet we must acknowledge them an 

 acquisition to the parterre, from the glowing and 

 vivid red colours they display. 



The seeds of this species of Dianthus were first 

 sent from China to Paris by the French missiona- 

 ries, about the year 1705, but the double varieties 

 of these flowers had not been seen before the year 

 1719, when they were frequent in some of the Pa- 

 risian gardens. Aiton notices the introduction of 

 the China Pink in England as early as 1713 ; but 

 Miller was certainly unacquainted with it in 1724, 

 as he describes the Indian Pink as bearing yellow 

 flowers only, and tells us that he takes the descrip- 

 tion from the written account of Monsieur Liger ; 

 but as that author's work, Le Jardinier, Fleuriste, 

 et Historiocjraphe, was published in 1703, two 

 years before the seeds had arrived from China, it is 

 clear that the India Pink of Monsieur Liger was a 

 different plant. 



