RULES FOR JUDGING FLORISTS' FLOWERS. 205 



set in the shade for a week or two, and given water plentifully. 

 Plants treated in this way frequently flower all the winter, but gene- 

 rally come into flower by the beginning of March. 



ARTICLE VI. 



OBSERVATIONS ON RULES FOR JUDGING FLORISTS' FLOWERS. 



BY AJIATOU JUSTITI.E, KELSO. 



I was not aware, indeed had never dreamt, until I saw your number 

 for July, that Dr. Lindley's reputation in the floricultural world was 

 so very great, as to impose upon your correspondents an obligation to 

 receive his floral lucubrations as those of an oracle, to whose authority 

 we are bound to render a prompt, silent, and reverential obedience. 

 That such is our duty, however, we are told by the secretary of the 

 Felton Floral Society; and I forbear to dispute the position, only 

 because, above all things, I wish to avoid the charge of being " cap- 

 tious." Leaving to the learned the decision of the question as to the 

 precise amount of critical acumen possessed by Dr. Lindley, I pro- 

 ceed to notice an error into which I observe Mr. William Harrison 

 has fallen, in his article on the Polyanthus. His remarks descriptive 

 of the various sorts he enumerates are, as far I am aware, pretty cor- 

 rect; but his ascribing the rules with which he prefaces his article to 

 the Doctor's eminent pen, is a mistake which I consider ought not to 

 pass uncorrected. Is it not true that during the summer of last year 

 the Doctor pirated the ideas, and, with a few verbal alterations, pub- 

 lished in his own organ, as the production of his own pen, the rules 

 which the " Metropolitan Florists' Society " had published some time 

 before? A charge of this nature was brought against him, without 

 any attempt on the part of the Doctor to impugn its truth. Without 

 any disposition to withhold from any man the meed of praise to which 

 he is fairly entitled, I therefore protest against the Doctor's having the 

 credit of a set of rules which are not his own, and the merit of which 

 is due to another and an abler man. 



I have made these few remarks from a desire that the real author 

 of the rules quoted by Mr. William Harrison should not be deprived 

 of the merit due to their authorship, and I trust to your sense of justice 

 and impartiality as a journalist to give them insertion in the next 

 number of the Cabinet — a publication to which I wish every success. 



August 15th, 1842. 



