40 FLORA HISTORICA. 



esteemed ; its proportion should be about equal 

 to that of the white, that it may neither appear 

 too large or too small." 



Although our forefathers might not have car- 

 ried refinement so far as to have laid down rules 

 for the government of our admiration towards 

 flowers, yet we find Professor Martyn wrong 

 when he states that the Pink had not attracted 

 any notice amongst our ancestors ; and that it is 

 only within the last half of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, that Pinks were much improved and varied, 

 so as to be greatly valued amongst florists. We 

 have already shown that they were cultivated 

 in the reign of Elizabeth ; and Parkinson enu- 

 merates many fine varieties that were favourites 

 in the time of his unhappy master Charles the 

 First. 



The White Pink is one of the flowers which 

 Milton calls for in his monody on Lycidus, and 

 London and Wise, so celebrated for having laid 

 out the gardens of Blenheim, and improving those 

 of Kensington, gives more pages on the culti- 

 vation of the Pink than on that of any other 

 plant contained in their " Retired Gardener" of 

 1706. 



Madame de Genlis, tells us that .it was the 

 good King Rene, of Anjou, the Henry the Fourth 

 of Provence, who first enriched the gardens of 



