HOW TO GROW SPECIMEN PLANTS. 291 



a real one. It is to the ambition of growers to produce 

 enormous plants that we trace the great change which has 

 taken place in our exhibitions. 



There is as much difference in a plant grown properly, 

 and standing undisturbed in its place at home, and one 

 grown artificially in an iron cage, as it were, and all the 

 branches and blooms bent about so as to come to the 

 outside surface, as there is between the sham flower and 

 the real one ; and he who for one moment gives himself 

 the trouble to think of the formal, stiff, and unnatural 

 shape of plants at a show, and the beautiful free growth 

 of the specimens in a private collection or a nursery, 

 where there is no showing, will not hesitate to pronounce 

 those at a show altogether spoiled for the lovers of plants. 



Nevertheless, those at a show form masses of flowers, 

 which in some measure compensate for multitudes of 

 wooden legs and iron bird cages. Geraniums, as for- 

 merly exhibited without sticks were very beautiful, far 

 before any thing we now have as specimens of growth, 

 though the prodigies of the present day rank far higher 

 as specimens of mechanical ingenuity and skill. The 

 system is altered ; plants naturally grown would stand no 

 chance against those with wooden legs ; the plants could 



