THE CARNATION. 



73 



rustic work, like every thing else, 

 gets into fashion, and then the 

 whole good taste of the country 

 grows mad about it. All sorts 

 of foolish and ridiculous extrava- 

 gances are indulged in it. One 

 of my neighbors is a victim to 

 this mania at the present mo- 

 ment. His gardener has made 

 him a rustic basket in the form 

 of a game cock, and planted its 

 head with scarlet verbenas, and 

 its tail with purple petunias : and 

 the employer, who has not a 

 \'ery severe taste, shows it to all 

 his visitors as something worthy 

 of universal admiration ! There are very 

 few places that I have ever seen, that would 

 bear even a little of this sort of grotesque- 

 ness. Any place, however fine, would be 

 ruined in effect by much of it. 



Rustic work is very perishable, if it is 

 made of little bits of rough branches of any 



Fig. 22. Design for a Rustic Gate. 



kind that are picked up in the forest after 

 the wood-chopper. On the other hand, if 

 it is always made of the branches of the 

 common Red Cedar, so abundant in most 

 parts of the country, it will last a long while, 

 and prove both strong and serviceable. 



RUSTICUS. 



THE CARNATION, ITS HISTORY AND CULTURE. 



BY AN AMATEUK FLORIST. 



I. ITS HISTORY. 



I TRUST you are an admirer of my favorite 

 flower the carnation. Not because you 

 are bound, by virtue of office, to patronize 

 all Flora's favorites, but that it is really and 

 per se worthy of universal admiration. 

 What, indeed, is more beautiful, or more 

 fragrant than a collection of the finest vari- 

 eties, comprising all gay and beautiful hues, 

 and all the odorous richness that belongs to 

 the spice groves of the East. 



Dianihus (flio? av&o^ of the original Greek) 

 signifies, literally, Jove^s Floiver, or the Di- 

 vine Flower. This name, bestowed on the 

 10 



genus to which the Carnation belongs, may 

 be taken as a proof of the favor in which it 

 was held a long time ago. How the popu- 

 lar name Carnation came to be bestowed, 

 the floral historiographers have not told us. 

 Perhaps it Avas given in allusion to the pe- 

 culiar flesh-coloured hue of some of the 

 plainer sorts — likely enough to have been 

 the first kinds known ; caro, carnis, being 

 the Latin term for flesh. Indeed Sleevens 

 says, that so long ago as before the time of 

 Shakespeare, Carnardine was the familiar 

 name of the flower. I find it thus used in 

 an old play of that era : 



