36 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE 



a carnation gerin, ready to frescoe their features on every new 

 carnation's life, since astonished Theophrastus exclaimed Dio 

 Anthos. 



New species are permanently established in opposition to the 

 tireless tendency of plants to lapse to their primitive types. The 

 principle on which it is done is fully explained in a quotation 

 from Asa Gray. 



"When an offspring inherits the peculiarities of its immedi- 

 ate parents, its offspring has a redoubled tendency to do the same 

 and the next generation still more; the tendency to be like the 

 parent, grand parent and great grand parent, conspires to over- 

 power the influence of a remoter ancestry." 



A species is initiated by a variety, but its fixity is the culmi- 

 nation of conspiring generations. lya Puritie, the stable type of the 

 remontant species of carnations, was the product of a dozen cross- 

 fertilizing conspirators from 1844 to 1856. The new species, Di- 

 anthus Superba, with grosser structure, stiffer stems, larger 

 flowers, requiring more heat, greater moisture and different nu- 

 trients, is the culmination of a hundred cross-fertilizing conspira- 

 tors during forty years to evolve a species of carnation to meet 

 their higher ideals. 



Mr Peter Fisher thinks it possible to obtain a strain of car- 

 nation s that will come true from seed. This may happen when 

 nature reverses its law of diversification and starts unifying the 

 vegetable kingdom. 



It is natural for originators to make pets of their seedlings, 

 maximize their merits and minimize their faults. They boom 

 them into notority by seductive advertising, the sorcery of half- 

 tone engravings, and, possibly, some financial plunger, who does 

 not know a corolla from a calyx, will offer a mythical sum of 

 money for a new variety, and confer upon it the name of his wife 

 for its stunning effect on the trade. 



There are on an average twenty new carnations introduced 

 every year; the originators are chargeable with a knowledge of 

 their merits by the venesected purchasers of stock from the time 

 they hold a proprietary interest in the new creation, and have 



