FEBRUARY. 31 



In the first place, wildness is not a fair representation of nature, 

 any more than license is of liberty, or a savage the genuine type of 

 a man. The same process of reasoning, if pushed to its legitimate 

 limits, would forbid us to graft or to bud. We must not prune a 

 Rose-tree nor train a Fuchsia into shape by the knife. To stop a 

 Pelargonium, and to tie out or peg down its branches, would be tailors' 

 trickery ; and in fact the striking from cuttings itself is an unnatural 

 process, and must be abandoned. We broke into the principle when 

 we became cultivators, and the practice must now be tried on far 

 narrower and less sweeping grounds. 



Again, no Pink of the present day, and all but no Carnation or 

 Picotee, can bloom without splitting its calyx and becoming utterly 

 unsightly, unless the calyx is supported by a tie. And this is dress- 

 ing as much as the disposal of the petals after expansion. If this be 

 equally objected to, as it often is, the objection is really against 

 having double flowers (which are unnatural), for no single Dianthus 

 splits its pod. But if we will not be content without having double 

 flowers, and no good reason can be given why we should, we must be 

 content to take the trouble they entail; just as when we choose to 

 have flowers in pots, or exotics in a conservatory, we place them in 

 an unnatural condition, and may no longer leave them to unaided 

 nature. 



Moreover, the process of dressing is applicable to but few flowers. 

 Philip Havapek has enumerated nearly all of them ; and the objection 

 is really no stronger than you have stated in your note to his com- 

 munication. At the period I have alluded to, there were a few Pinks 

 (there were no Carnations even then) useless to the amateur who did 

 not exhibit ; but which might, by pains, be made to push others, in- 

 trinsically better than themselves, from their place at a show. But 

 there are none now. The good may be made to look better, but 

 none unworthy of a place in any selection can now by such means 

 be rendered fit for exhibition. Therefore the public deception caused 

 by the practice is reduced within microscopic limits. Would there 

 were no more glaring causes of deception for the public to complain 

 of! Very few flowers admit of much manipulation. Your corre- 

 spondent will never be led far astray by the Pelargonium dresser ; 

 nor is the practice common with that flower. My friend and floral 

 guide, Mr. Beck, made it an objection in these pages against 

 Crusader, that it required that operation ; an objection that proves 

 the practice not to be general, or it would have no meaning. And 

 he was so right, that I have since discarded that variety for the fault. 

 In fact, no other flowers than those of the Pink tribe require more 

 preparation from the " milliner " than Philip Havapek would himself 

 unconsciously perform upon a Rose before he presented it to a young 

 lady, — namely, by depriving it of its thorns, and of whatever is dead 

 or unsightly, or would detract from the beauty of the offering, and by 

 presenting it in its most attractive form ; and in the Pink tribe the 

 practice must be judged of simply as a matter of competition before 

 judges, like the modes of preparing cattle for an agricultural meeting, 

 in which we consumers are no further interested than as it is a means 



