14 THE FLORIST. 



DRESSING FLOWERS. 



Tins I hold to be one of the most pernicious practices connected 

 with floriculture. If I attend an exhibition, I am struck with admi- 

 ration at the beauty of the Pinks, or the Picotees, or Carnations; I 

 no a purchaser, and with me, do what I will, they are mere 

 mops. I am no dresser of flowers; and if I could do it as well as 

 some of our first artists in that line, I have not the time, and I hope 

 never to have the inclination. 



I protest against the system. Let me have first-rate flowers, 

 combining all possible beauties from nature's hands ; none of your 

 milliner's trickery, by which all kinds of deformities are hidden ; and 

 we are beguiled into the belief that what is shewn is what we can 

 grow and display. 



I have noticed lately that the plan has been adopted with the 

 Pelargonium. In the varieties exhibited, both seedlings and specimen 

 plants, I could but observe last year what an amount of attention 

 had been bestowed; how some were rolled back to give a more 

 cupped appearance to the flower, which naturally it had not ; and 

 numberless other little arts, which I consider a serious evil, inas- 

 much as disappointment must be the lot of the purchaser on bloom- 

 ing them. 



Time was when I measured the value of a flower by its appear- 

 ance. Now I am obliged to draw my fingers over it ; touch the petals- 

 to see if they will not spring into a different position, or look for the 

 marks of a false flower having been removed. 



To leave the subject of dressing, let me now say a word about 

 the quantity of seedlings sent out annually by the principal raisers, 

 Hoyle, Foster, Beck, and Gaines. 



There is really no ground for doing this ; and it is a pity that in 

 the month of June all the seedlings cannot be got together in Regent 

 Street, at the National Floricultural or elsewhere, and a decision be 

 come to by a combined judgment of judges and growers as to what 

 varieties (two years' old, of course,) should go forth to the public. 



But to do this well, there must be a cultivation of judges; for 

 there is as much acquaintance with the points of excellence in a 

 Pelargonium required, as there is knowledge of the art of painting in 

 a person who should have to judge the value of a picture ; for as a 

 man not conversant with art would choose the sign of a public-house 

 in preference to a Vandyke or a Turner, so a person who has not 

 deeply studied what constitutes the excellence of a flower, would 

 choose an inferior production before one that contained the greatest 

 excellences. I am quite willing to acknowledge that the flower to 

 please the public is very different to what the critical amateur would 

 require ; and it was no bad idea to form a class of " Trade flowers," 

 which should supply the nurseryman with what would sell, and give 

 his customers satisfaction also. 



Philip Havapek. 



[Our correspondent is evidently no dresser, or he would know 

 that a mop can no more be made into a good flower, than a bad- 

 grown Geranium can be tied into a fine specimen. — Ed.] 



