FLORICULTURAL GLEANINGS. 251 



Such instances of the pleasures afforded by floriculture might be 

 multiplied ad infinitum, were it necessary; but it is not. But it 

 does seem necessary, and only common justice, that the names of 

 those florists who have added so much interest to the science of flori- 

 culture, by raising so many new and esteemed varieties of florists' 

 flowers, should he rescued from oblivion ; and that brief sketches of 

 their lives and success as florists should be furnished by chroniclers 

 in their respective localities, so that the dates of the raising of their 

 best flowers may be preserved and registered in works like the 

 Cabinet. One would imagine that brief memoirs of this kind 

 would be a peculiarly interesting feature in such a work, and that 

 they would be read with interest by the great mass of amateurs in 

 the kingdom, who feel pleasure at the success of any man who has 

 the good fortune to add to their stock of floral beauties. 



But the life of a florist, like that of an author, is seldom the subject 

 of curiosity, except when something new and valuable emanates 

 from him and attracts public attention. As some new and interest- 

 ing literary production brings the latter into greater notice before the 

 public, so the production of a new flower that eclipses the most of its 

 contemporaries brings the raiser into floral fame, and gains for him 



" A local habitation and a name," 

 which he would otherwise never have acquired. Who does not 

 recollect the — I may almost say — sensation caused by the appearance 

 of Fanny Kemhle (Tulip) ? Who can forget what an acquisition 

 Cox's Yellow Defiance was considered to the Dahlia grower ? Who 

 has forgot the pleasure he felt when he bloomed the first pod of his 

 first plant of Ely's Doctor Horner ? Whoever saw a bloom of 

 Dickson's Duke of Devonshire without glorying in Mr. D.'s success ? 

 Who was not glad at the appearance of Twitchett's Don John and 

 Headley's Sarah ? But I must stop, or I shall run over a list of all 

 the modern stars in the floral firmament ; and will only add that they 

 who did rejoice in beholding those floral acquisitions, and in the 

 success of their raisers, must have been narrow-minded and locally 

 selfish in the extreme; and I shall now proceed to detail a few parti- 

 culars respecting the life of the late Mr. Benjamin Ely, who has 

 undoubtedly been one of the most successful of the northern florists. 



Benjamin Ely, whose name is so well known to the admirers of 

 the Carnation and Picotee, was born at Rhode's Green, in the parish 



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