208 TIIE FLORIST. 



prizes are given for the best productions in vegetables, as well as for 

 stands of pansies, verbenas, collections of annual and perennial 

 flowers and nosegays, or bouquets, as they are called by some, but we 

 fancy our readers will like the old English name best. These exhi- 

 bitions of youthful skill and industry are well attended. — Midland 

 Florist. Oct. 1848. 



[Inserted at the request of a Correspondent. — Editor.] 



ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF FLORISTS' FLOWERS. 



To the Superintendent of The Florist. 

 No. IV. 

 In my former letters I have been occupied in the comparatively easy 

 task of criticising the objections made by others. I now come to 

 the more hazardous one of building up a system myself, and giving 

 the objectors an opportunity of treating me as I have treated them ; 

 and, in truth, I invite, or rather request, them to do so. That 

 there is a scientific system at the bottom of the ordinary estimates 

 of flowers, I have long been convinced ; and if I do not succeed in 

 developing it, the fault will be in these papers, which, therefore, I 

 should wish to be found fault with, because there is now an ample 

 sufficiency of facts accumulated for the science of floriculture to be 

 thence ascertained, and to take its place with other established sys- 

 tems. It is time for some one to do it, if I should fail. 



I proceed, therefore, to point out more particularly my view of the 

 scientific principles on which the general agreement among florists, 

 in what should be considered points of excellence in their flowers, 

 is based. After which, I purpose to apply those principles to some 

 of the flowers, as a specimen of what is required in all for an acknow- 

 ledged standard, to be referred to both by growers and judges ; pre- 

 mising, however, that I have not the arrogance to propose this essay 

 as such a standard : nor could it be ; for the principles themselves 

 must first be sifted by criticism, both friendly and unfriendly, until 

 some principles are established and recognised, and not till then can 

 such a manual be compiled. But this may serve as a first attempt 

 towards it, — to attract others into the same path, in order to weed 

 out what is unsound, to prune what is amiss, and to supply what is 

 wanting. It will also serve to shew that there are defined and cer- 

 tain boundaries, within which are confined respectively the province 

 of science, within which there will always be agreement, and the 

 province of taste, which admits of infinite diversity. 



And I am pleased at seeing the increase of instances of persons 

 conversant with the details of such matters, and who probably have 

 not turned their attention to the modes by which their judgments 

 have been influenced, feeling their way intelligibly and successfully 

 to the very points which reasoning will demonstrate to be the true 

 points of ideal excellence. Mr. Kendall has, in a recent Number 

 of The Florist , given us the properties of a good Cineraria ; and, as 



