BREVITIES. 145 



might be immensely popular as pot plants. The change required 

 would be chiefly structural, which features are most easily obtain- 

 ed by cross breeding. Carnationists who remember "Snowden" 

 will see in its form and habit a typical carnation pot plant. 



Carnations propagated by cuttings in August carried through 

 winter in cold frames and planted out in early spring will bloom 

 from June until heavy frost. 



^Esthetics would not have a carnation over three and a half to 

 four inches in diameter, on a stem stiff as a pike pole, nor with 

 petals quilled and formal as a dahlia; such qualities would rob 

 the flower of all its artistic grace. 



The calyxes of carnations are being increased in capacity; 

 their fibrous structure is more compact and of slower change 

 than the vascular petals. If adaption by selection had directed it- 

 self to longer claws for the petals there would be fewer ruptured 

 calyxes today. 



Nature carries relics of all its progressive achievement in the 

 nature and anatomy of every evolving species of plants and ani- 

 mals. In the physiology and structures of every variety of car- 

 nations there are vestigal homologues and heredities of every 

 progressive level the species has reached since Theophrastus ex- 

 claimed, Dio Anthos \ Among a thousand seedlings seventy-five 

 per cent will be reversals to some of these abandoned levels. 



There is but one way that carnations can be successfully and 

 satisfactorily grown by the people. It is to procure September 

 struck plants from a carnation grower early in the spring; plant 

 them in the lawn as taste suggests; neatly stake them and they will 

 afford a profusion of boutonaires and flowers until heavy frosts, 

 and be as decorative and cheap as geraniums. Pages that have 

 been written on the popular cultivation of the carnation are con- 

 densed in the above ex-cathedra epigram. 



