210 REMARKS OF ANCIENT WRITERS ON FLOWERS. 



year 1772, as I find described in Parkinson's work, published before 

 1656, several beautiful Carnations which we have lost; and he says 

 of Pinks, both double and single, " the number was so great, that to 

 give descriptions of them all were endlesse." When a child, I often 

 gazed with admiration on the flower pieces painted some centuries 

 ago, where magnificent Carnations were often the most conspicuous 

 objects; and, though innumerable plants of every kind have been 

 introduced into Great Britain lately, it must be admitted that most 

 of our sweetest flowers were cultivated by our ancestors, and that 

 much information concerning them may be gathered from old authors. 

 From my childhood the Carnation has been my favourite flower, and 

 since the first number of your interesting magazine I have watched 

 for every article respecting it ; but I found there nearly the same 

 treatment recommended — mixed composts and frames for protecting 

 the plants during winter : but all cultivators of Carnations have not 

 frames for every plant of Geranium, Auricula, or Carnation they wisl 

 to shelter, nor have they time or patience to wait till the wire-worm 

 has been banished from their newly mixed composts. The most en- 

 thusiastic lovers of gardening are not always the most wealthy ; to 

 such alone my hints may be useful. I have often witnessed, in spring, 

 the death of many a valuable plant of Carnation which had appeared 

 in vigorous health in autumn, till I suspected, from observing the 

 flourishing appearance of plants of the same kind, growing in the 

 common borders of my kitchen garden, that mixed composts were 

 to be dreaded. 



I found, from experience, that the common soil of my garden, where 

 cabbages had been planted the year before, mixed with sand, was the 

 only safe soil of which I could make beds for my Carnations ; I had 

 too many to keep in frames. I learned from Parkinson, that what 

 I was chiefly to guard against were " the bitter, sharp winds in 

 March ;" and I learned also from him that I ought to protect my 

 plants with basket-work, or anything else ingenuity suggested without 

 covering them. A very old experienced gardener taught me not to 

 remove the stakes to which they had been tied during the summer, 

 and not to throw away nor transplant my old plants, otherwise I might 

 gather no seed the following year, as layers of a year old seldom 

 perfected their seed. From Parkinson I had learned that " the best, 

 fairest, and most double flowers" came from those flowers which 



