HISTORY OF THE PINK 51 



description of garden Pinks is given, the figure accom- 

 panying the text being a cut of Dianthus superbus. " The 

 Pynkes and small feathered Gillofers are like to the double 

 or cloave Gillofers in leaves, stalkes, and floures, saving 

 they be single and a great deale smaller. The leaves be 

 long and narrow, almost like grasse, the smal stemmes are 

 slender and knottie, upon which growe the sweete smell- 

 ing floures, like to the Gillofers aforesayde, saving cache 

 floure is single with five or sixe small leaves, deepe and 

 finely snipt, or frenged like to small feathers of white, 

 redde, and carnation colour." Elsewhere, Lyte remarks 

 there were " divers sortes great and small," and as diverse 

 in colours as Carnations, adding they were " called in 

 Englishe by divers names, as Pynkes, Soppes in Wine, 

 feathered Gillofers and small Honesties." Gerard is the 

 earliest authority to introduce us to double Pinks, obviously 

 forms of D. plumarius^ of which when Parkinson wrote 

 there were two or three. If we are to credit Rea, Pinks 

 were of little esteem, and were grown in gardens mostly 

 as edgings to flower-beds, and sometimes used in posies 

 along with damask roses. Writers on gardening in 

 the early part of the eighteenth century, include Pinks 

 among other flowers esteemed in gardens. It is at 

 this period the Pheasant-eyed Pink first appears. A 

 " gardener," writing in 1732, notes the Pink as "a very 

 sweet and fine Flower, having a great many Varieties, some 

 single, mark'd finely with Red in the Middle, call'd 

 Pheasant-ey*d Pink, one sort as large as a Carnation, and 

 double, with the Pheasant-eye in the Middle." The same 

 authority mentions " a striped Sort, call'd the Old Man's- 

 head Pink, which blows all the Winter, if it be sheltered 

 in a Green-house." Miller adds other names to those 

 noted above, and other writers add to the varieties, 

 showing how much this sweet flower was esteemed in 

 the early Georgian era. Among the varieties named 

 by Miller, is one called Dobson's, which shortly after 



