APRIL. 87 



FLORICULTURE PAST AND PRESENT. 



As in your Number with which you commence the present year you 

 request contributions from those who wish well to the success of the 

 Florist, I, though only an amateur, needing information rather than 

 qualified to impart it, send you a communication which may afford 

 amusement to some of your readers as a variety. I ought, indeed, 

 to be an experienced instructor, for my father was a devoted admirer 

 and successful cultivator of " Florists' flowers ;" and I am old enough 

 to remember the first introduction of the Camellia, the Fuchsia, and 

 the Blush China, or, as it was then called, the Linnaean Rose. The two 

 last, which now adorn every cottage-garden, were then treated as 

 greenhouse plants, and sold at half a guinea each ; while the Camellia 

 was not to be obtained under several guineas. Few, indeed, were 

 the exotics which at that time adorned our gardens, brought over 

 accidentally by the captains of vessels to please a friend or proprietor, 

 as in the instance of the Camellia, named after Captain Camel, and 

 the scarlet Lychnis, which adorns the button-hole of old Parkinson's 

 portrait prefixed to his Paradisus Terrestris, still remained almost the 

 only scarlet flower known. 



But if the innumerable beauties, both hardy and tender, which 

 now grace our gardens and greenhouses, were then for the most part 

 unknown, Florists' flowers, as they are called, were cultivated with 

 great ardour; and the numerous societies now establishing, and to 

 whose transactions your Periodical is more especially devoted, are, 

 in fact, only the revival of a spirit which prevailed (in the midland 

 counties at least), with even greater fervour, in former times. 



My father's fine collections of Auriculas, Hyacinths, Tulips, Ane- 

 mones, Ranunculuses, Pinks, and Carnations, are among the most 

 pleasing of my early recollections; and I well remember the delight 

 with which I accompanied him on the fine spring mornings to draw 

 up the canvass screen, which was let down at night before a stand of 

 500 pots of the choicest Auriculas, and enjoyed the delicious fragrance 

 which they exhaled. The Florists' feasts of the town in which my fa- 

 ther resided were an object of attraction to the neighbouring gentry, 

 in a humble degree resembling that of the celebrated Chiswick exhi- 

 bitions ; and on one occasion a spirited landlord knocked down the 

 end of his banqueting-room, and extended a canvass awning far into 

 the public street for the greater accommodation of the company. My 

 father had an assistant, who was very clever in managing Carnations, 

 and particularly so in the art of " dressing" their flowers, which has 

 lately been the subject of controversy in your pages ; he was club- 

 footed, deeply scarred with the small-pox, with a complexion which 

 exposure and strong ale had dyed the colour of mahoganv, and was 

 altogether as " grim" a subject as can well be imagined. With these 

 special personal qualifications, he was generally required, after the 

 social and convivial "feast" which followed the exhibition, to mount 

 the table attired in the landlady's cap, gown, and petticoat, and sing 

 a song in the character of Fair Flora. Such were the rural gaieties 



