THE YELLOW PICOTEE 9 



last century. He crossed these yellow varieties with the 

 white-ground Picotees, and obtained some varieties of the 

 true florist's form of colouring and marking. My late 

 friend, Mr. B. Simonite of Sheffield, saw them exhibited 

 before the National Carnation and Picotee Society in 1858, 

 and thought them of the highest class in form and mark- 

 ings. The yellow tint of the petals was paler than heretofore, 

 owing to the cross with the white varieties. Smith began 

 crossing in 1847, and it was ten years before he was able to 

 show these perfectly formed flowers ; they did not become 

 widely distributed. A variety named Prince of Orange 

 was introduced in the early sixties a clear yellow flower, 

 with a well-defined red margin. From this variety a 

 batch of seedlings was raised in the nurseries of Mr. 

 Charles Turner of Slough, some of them exhibiting a con- 

 siderable improvement on the parent plant. From these 

 seedlings I was successful in obtaining a further advance. 

 Other raisers have since taken the matter in hand, and 

 the yellow Picotee is now perfect in form and markings. 



Amongst the later Carnation growers, one name stands 

 pre-eminent as a raiser, the late Mr. Martin Ridley Smith. 

 When he started with the intention of improving the Car- 

 nation, he spared no pains or expense to obtain the best 

 varieties. He asked me to go with him to Erfurt in 

 Germany, and we spent a day in carefully examining all 

 the choicest varieties grown in the nursery of Mr. Ernest 

 Denary at Erfurt, and the fancy varieties we selected on 

 that occasion were the parents of the fine varieties raised 

 by Mr. Smith. There were two very good selfs amongst 

 them, a pure-white flower of excellent form, and the perfect 

 yellow self named Germania. This latter variety was the 

 parent of many beautiful selfs of quite different colours. 



