DIANTHUS. 
splendid yet, however, is the form or hybrid of this called the Carton 
Park or Glasnevin variety. This is a very big thing with long grass 
of greyish green, and very long stems spraying out this way and that, 
and loosely branching. Each stem ends in a head of two or three 
large flowers opening in succession, and of the most perfect and 
undefiled crimson-scarlet velvet that the garden holds. It is a pity 
of course that the plant should be so high and loose in habit, for its 
2- or 3-foot sprays are rather overpowering even for those glaring 
blossoms ; yet, on a bold shelf it makes a noble show in late summer 
and autumn, and should be kept going by means of cuttings in case 
that show should prove to have been too generous. But the per- 
manence of the clump itself can be guaranteed by cutting the whole 
thing down at the end of September, to within 3 inches or so of the 
stock. 
D. attenuatus is a worthless weed. 
D. Balansae is almost woody in habit, a low dense mat of twisted 
twigs, with dwarf delicate stems, and pink flowers with ten or eleven 
teeth to each petal. (Cappadocia.) 
D. Balbisii, a species incessantly advertised in the same lists with 
D. liburnicus, is simply a synonym, or at best a sub-species in a large 
and crowded group, including D. pruinosus, D. giganteus, D. bannaticus; 
all of these being more or less tall and gawky 2- to 3-foot Cluster- 
heads, with bunched little flowers of magenta-crimson, looking rather 
ineffective at the top of their naked lanky legs. In D. bannaticus, 
however (D. giganteus, Urv.), the hairy heads reveal flowers of blood- 
scarlet, less impure and unpleasing than in the others, though small 
and without dash. 
D. barbatus ; the Sweet-William has little place in the garden ; nor 
should it admit, me judice, any terrible podgy double dwarf forms 
of repulsive aniline crimson, such as those called Napoleon III, 
D. barbatus compactus grandiflorus plenus, and so forth; their 
chief merit is that of generally flowering themselves to death, and of 
showing still further consideration in not making any grass by which 
they may be propagated. D. Atkinsoni, however, redeems this 
ephemeral habit by the almost overdone gorgeousness of its pure 
scarlet-crimson flowers of rich velvet, and D. striatiflorus has usually 
unstriped blooms in a lovely soft shade of pink. 
D. biflorus, lately raised to specific rank, is the high-alpine de- 
velopment, rare in the stony regions of Hubcea and Parnassus, of the 
glorious D. cinnabarinus, which has now been divorced into two halves, 
as D. biflorus and D. Sammartanii. This is a green and smooth-leaved 
Species compact in habit, sending up 6-inch stems, each carrying 
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