INTRODUCTION. XXXVll 



of our tables. The florist lays down a certain arbi- 

 trary standard of perfection, and attempts to make 

 flowers conform to that model. Whether it be in 

 good taste or not to value all flowers, in proportion 

 as they accord with an artificial and comparatively in- 

 elastic standard of this kind, we need not stop to 

 enquire ; suffice it to say, that taking the matter in its 

 broadest sense, the aim of the florist is to pro- 

 duce large, symmetrical flowers, brightly and purely 

 coloured, or if parti-coloured, the colours must bo 

 distinct, harmonious, or contrasted. When all this is 

 done, the flower, in most instances, becomes * mon- 

 strous ' of the eyes in the botanist, though all the more 

 interesting to the student of morphology on that 

 account. In like manner the double flowers, the 

 " breaks," the " sports" which the florist cultivates so 

 anxiously, are all of them greater or less deviations 

 from the ordinary form, while the broccolies, the 

 cabbages, and many other products of our kitchen 

 gardens and fields owe the estimation in which they 

 are held entirely to those peculiarities which, by an 

 unhappy application of words, are called monstrous 

 by botanists. Grafting, layering, the "striking" of 

 cuttings, the formation of adventitious roots and buds, 

 processes on which the cultivator so greatly relies 

 for the propagation and extension .of his plants, are 

 also matters with which teratology concerns itself. 

 Again the difficulty experienced occasionally in getting 

 vines, strawberries, &c., to set properly, may some- 

 times be accounted for by that inherent tendency 

 which some plants possess of exchanging an her- 

 maphrodite for a unisexual condition. 



For reasons then of direct practical utility, no 



d 



