THE 





October, 1858. 



UE, enjoyment of the gay spectacle produced by 

 a tasteful assemblage of thousands of Dahlias, at 

 St. James's Hall, on the 23rd of last month, was, 

 in a great measure, marred, by detecting, in 

 numerous instances, evidences of fictitious excel- 

 lencies, conferred upon the blooms by the expert 

 fingers of exhibitors. Divesting one's mind of 

 the prejudices of florists, and the rigid laws of 

 properties by which judges determine relative 

 merit, a flower show will always make an appeal 

 to the moral sense, as to what is fair and honest, 

 and what is trickery, in floral competitions. 

 Pope's well-known lines on vice apply very 

 forcibly to the ethics of oiir competitive meetings. 

 A beginner in such things at first despises the 

 arts of the man whose side-board is covered with silver cups, but, finding 

 himself beaten, time after time, by flowers no better grown, but very 

 differently shown, he begins in time to try his hand at such manipulations, 

 and his progress in the art of dressing is accompanied with a steady ascent 

 in prize lists, and he at last gains a premier place, not by increased skill 

 in culture, but by mastership of the tweezers. How many of the vast 

 number of magnificent dahlias that were so admirably grouped on the 

 tables of the National Dahlia Show, were in precisely the state in which 

 nature had fashioned them ? How many had been denuded of green 

 centres, and false petals, and so dressed up for the occasion, that they 

 presented appearances altogether foreign to their character, as the simple 

 result of careful cultivation ? It might be an awkward affair, if every ex- 

 hibitor of dahlias, chrysanthemums, carnations, and auriculas, were re- 

 quired to give a faithful report of every process through which his 

 winning flowers had passed, from their first formation in the bud, to their 

 final achievement of a triumph for him in a well contested competition. 

 So awkward, indeed, is this whole matter, as to its moral issues, that it is 



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