Sporting or Ruuning of Carnations, 143 
results did not justify the supposition. Composts 
have been made up of two-thirds decayed animal 
manure and one-third loam, and the proportions 
have been reversed, but in both cases an equal num- 
ber of flowers were run. Too much animal 
manure in the compost cannot be otherwise than 
injurious to the health of the Carnation, though this 
need not necessarily take the form of run flowers. 
A large proportion of manure may cause rank, 
sappy growth, liable to encourage fungous attack, 
or even to import eel-worms or nematoids; or on 
the other hand to destroy the root system by 
retaining too much moisture about them during 
winter. 
Cold, wet summers have been regarded as the 
principal cause of this evil, but experienced 
cultivators, from the time of Thomas Hogg down- 
wards, have observed that sporting has been more 
prevalent in dry, hot seasons, than in cold, wet ones. 
Violas, “Ten-Weeks Stocks, and East Lothian 
Stocks often give a large percentage of striped or 
variegated flowers in dry, hot weather, and in shady 
situations as if constitution were being weakened 
or played out for lack of sufficient moisture in the 
one case and sunshine or general exposure in the 
other. 
There is another and more important fact in con- 
nection with all florists’ flowers, that have been 
cultivated and intercrossed with one another, over 
a long series of years, and which seems to be over- 
looked or ignored by writers on the Carnations. 
Colours are stable in proportion to the length of 
time they have existed, or, in other words, to their 
antiquity. The more they are intercrossed and the 
more recently, the more unstable, as if unable to 
maintain their highly complicated and_ recently 
acquired characters. It is impossible now to trace 
the genealogy of modern Carnations, except to com- 
paratively recent parents; but there can be no 
doubt that accidental and systematic crossing have 
rendered the colours highly unstable by the blend- 
ing of colours and characters that may be 
antagonistic to one another, so that in time the 
more prepotent gain the mastery so to speak. 
The original, wild Carnation had pink or pale 
rose flowers, the colour being equally diffused over 
the whole petal. In rare cases an albino or white 
variety occurs, but more frequently in batches of 
garden seedlings If the white and the rose varieties 
