ON SHOWING CARNATIONS AND PICOTEES. 57 



ON SHOWING CARNATIONS AND PICOTEES. 



A Correspondent to the Midland Florist remarks upon the great trial 

 shows of these flowers which took place last season, and suggests the for- 

 mation of an organized Society, to be called " The National Flori- 

 cultural Society," or such other name as may be approved. One especial 

 particular should be arranged, viz., a full report of each exhibition 

 should be drawn up by the judges immediately after the show has been 

 held, and the good qualities, or defects, of each variety of flower 

 exhibited, as might appear to them to call for the same, should be 

 given. Also to support or deprecate the practice or mode of showing 

 the flowers according to their judgment. "We should then, in course 

 of time, have some data to work upon, so as to bring about one uniform 

 system of exhibiting, the want of which I have felt. Here I beg to 

 call attention to the void which has been left as to the propriety or 

 impropriety of using cards, about which so much was written last 

 Spring, not a word can I find either for or against since the great 

 exhibitions took place, although it was predicted, and hoped for, that 

 those shows was to settle the matter. 



As to the mode of showing, very great improvement may, I think, 

 be made. For instance, there should be no collections of six, or even 

 two flowers, at such exhibitions ; the old maxim, " let every tub 

 stand on its own bottom," should be adopted, as a sitie qua non; and 

 the same variety should be placed onhj once. This would enable a 

 grower in the most remote corner of the kingdom to form a tolerably 

 correct idea of the comparative merits of the numerous varieties in 

 cultivation ; whereas, who can tell anything at all about it from the 

 past exhibitions ? There should be an additional class, in which to 

 test seedlings; where an equal number of blooms of each variety 

 should compete, but the above rule be reversed, viz. each should be 

 placed as often as its merits surpassed its rivals. I say " additional 

 class," because they should also be allowed to compete with the old 

 varieties, where the number of blooms should be unlimited, and there- 

 fore only one would be sufficient, if good ; but limited in the other 

 class, to show how much better it is than other new ones. 

 * Some one may object to the first mode, and say it would not be fair 

 to a good variety ; but is it not equally unfair for one variety only, 

 and, it may be, the same grower, as at the last exhibition, to sweep 

 the deck at once ? Where is the competition of the grower in such a 

 case ? It was the variety, not skill, that gained the victory ; but the 

 other mode would show both at once. Local societies may very 

 reasonably, in the present state of floriculture, leave it open for the 

 exhibitors to put up such flowers as they have, for the want of more or 

 better varieties ; but where a society is formed with such pretensions 

 as " The National " ought to have, there should be the most perfect 

 code of laws, both as to quality and showing, in order to prove to 

 those who only have the chance of reading the reports, as well as those 

 who actually seethe Rowers, which are best, and why they are so. 



Many of our humbler competitors cannot afford to get new varieties 

 as often as they appear (and I include myself in this class of culti- 



