MYTHOLOGY, AND HISTORY OF THE PEONY 



all the varieties in commerce. Within three or 

 four years most of the plants were well estab- 

 lished and had begun to yield characteristic 

 blooms. For five years the Nomenclature Com- 

 mittee of the Society, Bertrand H. Farr and 

 Joseph Dauphin, together with an expert horti- 

 culturist at Cornell, Dr. Leon C. Batchelor, 

 worked over this collection and compared their 

 observations with studies carried on by them at 

 several of the large nurseries in the eastern part 

 of the country. With painstaking and disinter- 

 ested labour, nearly all distinct varieties usually 

 grown were identified and described as to form, 

 colour and fragrance of flower and vigour, habit 

 and floriferous qualities of the plant. After 

 eliminating the numerous synonyms and the kinds 

 wrongly named— in a number of instances the 

 same variety appeared under as many as twenty 

 different designations — the twenty-six hundred 

 names contained in the complete list were sifted 

 down to five hundred separate meritorious vari- 

 eties. These five hundred — which were mostly 

 varieties of P. albiflora— comprise nearly all of 

 the peonies of value to be found in the entire 



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