75 



a system of premiums, (but that vre promised to say no more 

 about.) Certainly, however, it is evident that the exhibition 

 would have been vastly better if fewer artists had tried their 

 hand at boquet- making, and had been satisfied to display their 

 favors in simple collections of cut flowers, trusting for success 

 rather to taste in selecting perfect blooms than to skill in ar- 

 ranging them for decorative uses. It requires no small ex- 

 perience, as well as natural talent, to compose a boquet or floral 

 design of any sort, that shall betray superior merit ; and a 

 poor work of this sort looks worse in an exhibition than the 

 most ordinary set of cut flowers ever brought out. It does not 

 lessen our confidence in this idea, that we found it so fully 

 proven on this occasion in both its aspects. It is hardly nec- 

 essary to say, in explanation, that we consider the selections of 

 cut flowers shown to have been the head of the display by 

 quite as much as placed the boquets and vases at the other 

 exti'emity. 



Yet after this long story of defects, we gladly pronounce the 

 show of flowers to have been, on the whole, a very fine one. 

 The Dahlias were superior; the Asters and Miscellaneous 

 Flowers fair ; the Pot Plants very good, and many of the 

 Baskets and Dishes did credit to the exhibitors. Thanks to 

 the propitious Autumn, our fears for the success of the Dahlia 

 were dissipated, and this gorgeous old favorite was in its high 

 place of honor as usual. Not only so ; but more perfect 

 blooms have rarely come under our notice. Out of nearly six 

 hundred flowers, we could hardly detect three score that 

 showed decided imperfection. Would that the same could be 

 said of the other members of the very brief series, that form 

 the sole stock of a floral show in harvest-time. But the 

 Asters, whose claims and capabilities are second only to the 

 Dahlias, had nothing to recommend them in this case but colof, 

 which they showed in great perfection. Their form, in every 

 instance noticed, was scraggy and unsynimetrical, proving a 

 lack of skill in cultivation, or of taste in selection, and both 

 alike fatal to success in exhibition. If half of those who 



