THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GAEDEN GUIDE. 85 



the light as equally as possible, but take care to have enough about 

 the boundary line. Always work up to your best flowers : do not 

 use them to bring othsrs out, but, while staging nothing but what 

 is good, lead up by judicious arrangement of colours to your 

 thumpers, to insure their counting their full value in the judging. 

 A little dressing will be required as you proceed, and you will have 

 to learn the art by practice, although in essence it is most simple, 

 and essentially honest. Tou are not to stick petals into flowers that 

 show goggle eyes, but you may cleverly clip off the decayed edge of 

 a petal, or twitch a petal out if necessary. A very large Malmaison, 

 not quite out, may perhaps be improved by giving it a gentle squeeze 

 between the finger and thumb, and then the removal of the stained 

 outside petal may make a fine flower of it. An ivory dressing-stick 

 will be found useful. It should be the size of your middle finger, 

 fiat, and rounded at one end. If in any difficulty about obtaining 

 it, ask a lady friend to show you the ivories employed in nettm?, 

 and borrow one for practice. By deftly handling this, holding the 

 rose at the base between the thumb and two fingers of the left hand, 

 you may regulate the petals if they are a little disorderly, gently 

 curling them in towards the centre. 



To provide moss may prove a more difficult task than providing 

 roses. If it is not green and bright, you will be better off without 

 it ; but as there is nothing so good as moss, you must be at some 

 trouble to secure it if you can. The Eev. S. E. Hole recommends 

 preparing a lining of zinc for the boxes, and in this growing the 

 dwarf Lycopodium, Selaginella apoda, to form a rich green bed for 

 the roses. But this adds to the weight of the boxes, and is finer in 

 theory than practice. The late C. J. Perry, of Castle Broinwich — 

 one of the truest florists and heartiest of men who has helped a show 

 in modern times — once spoilt the look of a magnificent box of 

 twenty-four at the Crystal Palace by bedding them on cut sprays of 

 the common lycopodium, Selaginella denticulata, which had a most 

 weedy appearance. What, then, you will ask, is a rosarian to do if 

 he cannot obtain real moss of the proper fairy-like texture and 

 colour ? The answer is easy. Let the boxes be nicely painted and 

 varnished a full dark green colour, and set up the flowers without 

 moss, and every rose will appear to the judicial as well as to the 

 public eye in its proper beauty. 



"When you have done all, be patient and hopeful. If you win, 

 be not vain ; if you lose, be not down-hearted ; and, above all 

 things, do not openly or inwardly abuse the judges, for remember 

 that they perhaps know more about roses than you do, and after all 

 they are but fallible men, and must have a margin for error in com- 

 mon with other people. 



March. 



