Show Carnations and Picotees. 47 
the Llorist and Pomologist in which he discusses 
. the subject at great length. “ Form and colour” he 
considered were the means whereby a flower was 
rendered pleasant to the eye. Colour produced its 
effect by “contrast and combination.” Form was 
the characteristic to which all other properties of the 
flower had to be subservient. This again branched 
into “unity and variety.” Perfection of “unity” 
lay in all the parts of the flower being present to 
maintain: an unbroken outline. “ Variety” might 
consist of forms, numbers or colours, or any combina- 
tion of them. 
He further stated that “The Carnation owes 
much, though not all, of its superiority to the Picotee 
or the Pink, to the fact that, without violence to its 
general unity, it has no two petals, and no two 
stripes on the same petal, alike in the form of their 
colours. With respect to the general forms of 
flowers, different shapes are best suited to different 
purposes. The cup-edged or rose-leaved petal, 
elegant as it is, is unsuited to show the colours of 
the Polyanthus, the Auricula, or the disked 
Cineraria, though it enhances the beauty of the 
Carnation, the Picotee or Pink.” 
He also thought that the particular arrangement 
of the colours in a Carnation imparted an advent- 
tious magnitude to them. The flakes, bars, and 
lines run outwards towards infinitely, are parallel, do 
not cross one another, and are not terminated by any 
visible end. In the Picotee, on the contrary, the 
marginal lacing of the flowers, is transverse to the 
length of the petal to which it forms a visible 
termination as well as to the colours. For this 
reason a Picotee, really as large as the largest Carna- 
tion, “ will necessarily appear small and confined by 
comparison.” 
The late E. S. Dodwell, of Oxford, a grower of 
considerable repute. gave some definitions of a good 
Carnation :— 
“Quality, high quality, is of the first importance, 
and demands the highest consideration ; its presence 
depends upon the existence of a rich texture, lustrous 
colours, pure white ground, and smoothness, both of 
the surface and edge of the petals.” “Size, as a 
point of excellence, deserves fhe least consideration. 
Any limit between 2}in. as a minimum and 35in. as 
a maximum, will be found to afford ample ground 
