32 THE PROSPECT OF PLORICUI/rUBE. 



are rapidly becoming acquainted with a branch of gardening to which 

 they were formerly strangers, and many have become practical florists. 

 The properties which constitute a good flower have become more gene- 

 rally known ; and the very fact of a man being able to try the merit 

 of anything he raises by an unerring test, has induced many to sow 

 seeds, and raise new varieties. The work of a gentleman's gardener 

 requires a man of steady habits and sound judgment ; but besides these 

 essentials a florist must be a man of taste ; and those who, beyond the 

 mere requisites for a gardener of the old school, happened to possess a 

 taste for the superior flowers have now, and have had for some time, 

 ample opportunities of increasing it ; for the nobility and gentry are 

 no longer content with the plants and flowers that once reigned supe- 

 rior in every first-rate establishment. Gardeners are now imitating 

 the humble classes of amateur-florists, to whom we owe the great im- 

 provements in flowers. How few of the noble varieties of Carnations 

 and Picotees can be traced to professional gardeners ; even of those which 

 bear the name of professional nurserymen and dealers, not one in ten 

 belonged to them, till they were purchased of some less pretending but 

 more useful cultivators ; they are but seen beginning to do what has 

 hitherto been done for them in raising seedlings. We know there are 

 florists in the trade who have raised many valuable flowers, but the 

 chief of them confirm our statement, for they were not brought up 

 florists by profession, but have raised themselves into eminence as 

 dealers, by their success as raisers of florist's flowers. 



The hybridizing of"plants, condemned by botanists, because it, as they 

 alleged, destroyed botanical distinctions,' and rendered the originals 

 mere weeds in comparison with the improvements produced, is only an 

 imitation of what florists have been doing for centuries ; it is simply the 

 progress of floriculture which aims at improvement, and is rapidly 

 spreading throughout all the ranks of professional and amateur gar- 

 deners. It is seldom that the raiser of a new and good thing gets 

 the credit, or the proper advantages of producing novelty. He 

 parts with it to some nurseryman or dealer for whatever he can get, 

 and forthwith the buyer has all the credit, and nearly all the profit of 

 its production. True it is that dealers also now raise flowers, but for 

 one good one they raise, they buy and adopt of other people a dozen. 

 The stamp of a good flower has now become familiar, the properties 

 are read and understood by everybody who takes a delight in floricul- 

 ture, and it will lead ultimately to better prices for the raisers. The 

 only drawback to universal improvement is " stand-showing," because 

 middling varieties, easily grown and tolerably certain, are produced to 

 the disparagement of stands, and prevent uniformity of quality, and yet 

 " stand-showing" is inevitable where general shows are held for the 

 admission of the public, because size and quantity are, and always will 

 be, held to be necessary. What chance would some of the coarse gaudy 

 kinds of anything stand against superior models, in class-showing? 

 Yet when twelve are shown together, the coarse ones perhaps out 

 number the best in every stand, and the same great rough blooms pre- 

 vailing in all, more or less, the individual merit of certain flowers, is 

 totally lost. Dahlias will, if we have three or four years like the last 



