758 MONTHLY SUMMARY. 



-useful to the Chrysanthemum grower. With this new strain 

 vre shall, in a few years, have all the kinds, down to the little 

 Porapones, striped and variegated, like Camellias, in all sorts of 



ways, * ' 



As regards the established kinds, the exhibition was chiefly 

 remarkable for the skill displayed in the growth of the plants. 

 Whether, however, the skill and ingenuity shown in bringing 

 these plants to the shape in which they were exhibited is talent 

 exerted in the right direction, may admit of some drachm of a 

 scruple, or even of a scruple itself. To bring a plant into a 

 desired form by cultivation is one of the proper objects of horti- 

 culture, but the proper means of doing so is by making Nature 

 herself, through breeding and cultivation, produce the desired result 

 in her own way ; the subsidiary assistance of pruning and disbud- 

 ding can scarcely be condemned as in all cases illegitimate, or 

 beyond the horticulturist's fair means. But it is otherwise with 

 the tying, and twisting, and propping, and bending, by which not 

 only Chrysanthemums, but Azaleas, Pelargoniums, Pinks, Picotees, 

 and a host of other plants, are now made to assume an appearance 

 for the nonce which they do not in reality possess. The Chrysan- 

 themum is the tribe in which this manipulation is, perhaps, carried 

 to the greatest extent. It is not alone the ordinary appliances of 

 sticks and threads, by which the plant is made to assume a compact 

 form, and the flowers to seem equally distributed, which are used, but 

 the blooms themselves are subjected to disingenuous treatment; the 

 heart of their mystery is plucked out — (that is, the central petals) 

 the bud is collared in card, or treated like the man in the iron 

 mask; a tin implement compels the flat expanding petals to turn 

 into incurved blooms; and, in short, the old plan attributed in 

 jest to phrenologists, and made use of by Captain Marryat in one 

 of his novels, of amending a man's unsatisfactory dispositions by 

 depressing the bad bumps and raising the good ones by mechani- 

 cal appliances, is here had recourse to in sober earnest. Some of 

 these latter manoeuvres either do or should disqualify from com- 

 petition; actual tampering with the petals should in no case be 

 allowed ; but it is difficult to draw the line, and we protest we 

 would rather want some of the beauty and effect of our great 

 shows than have it attained by manipulation, carried to the extent 

 it is. Something is wanted to check these artificial practices. 

 This, probably, could only be done by encouraging the production 

 of plants not so doctored. Anything more would be hopeless. 

 It would never do to prescribe laws how far the gardener mav train 



