THE CULTURE OF FLOWERS 



FROM SEEDS 



WHETHER the modern demand for flowers has created the 

 supply, or the supply has found an appreciative public, we 

 need not stay to discuss. The fact remains that the last three or 

 four decades have witnessed an extended use of flowers altogether 

 disproportioned to the increased population and the growing wealth 

 of the nation. Flowers are now used for personal adornment and 

 home decoration by classes of the community that would, less than 

 half a century ago, have regarded them as forbidden luxuries. 

 Primarily, this advance of refinement in the popular taste is traceable 

 to the skill and enthusiastic devotion of the florists who have sup- 

 ported in all their integrity the true canons of floral perfection, and 

 whose labours will continue to be imperative for maintaining the 

 standards of quality. By their severe rules of criticism the florists 

 further the ends of floriculture subjectively, and by the actual results 

 of their labours they render objective aid, their finest flowers serving 

 not only as types, but as the actual stud for perpetuating each race. 

 Hence the decline of floriculture would imply the deterioration of 

 flowers, and the prosperity of floriculture involves progress not only 

 in those subjects which lie within the florists' domain, but of many 

 others to which they have not devoted special attention. Yet the 

 acknowledgment must be made that, brilliant as their triumphs have 

 been, the methods they practised have in some instances entailed 

 very severe penalties. Continuous propagation for many generations, 

 under artificial conditions, so debilitated the constitution of Holly- 

 hocks, Verbenas, and some other subjects, that the plants became 

 victims of diseases which at one time threatened their existence. 

 To save them from annihilation it was necessary to desert the worn 



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