CONSTRUCTION OF BOUQUETS. ETC. 227 



that over-fastidious taste which rejects all yellow flowers. 

 [Fashion now gives preference to yellow flowers over all 

 other colors. P.H.] Even established rules on colors 

 fail to guide us always in the arrangement of flowers. 

 Artists tell us that blue and green should never come to- 

 gether, yet the Violet can have no more beautiful setting 

 than its own green leaves, while dark blue flowers show 

 to equal advantage in their darker green foliage. In 

 Nature's own setting, all flowers are becoming ; it is only 

 by placing them at a disadvantage that they can ever 

 appear otherwise ; but so infinite are their shades and 

 forms that their perfect arrangement in bouquets must 

 ever be a work of taste and skill. We would not assert 

 that bouquet makers, like poets, " are born, not made," 

 yet we know that many in this, as in other callings, are 

 and ever will be, utterly unfitted for the work they 

 undertake. 



Funeral flowers are now a very important part of the 

 florist's trade. Ten years ago, ten dollars' worth of 

 flowers were more rare at a funeral in New York than 

 one hundred now, and sometimes one funeral demands a 

 thousand dollars' worth. The wreath and crescent- 

 wreath are undoubtedly the best forms for this purpose, 

 and the cross is a favorite and beautiful emblem. An 

 upright cross of flowers, solid on all sides, with a base of 

 the same, is a very striking object, but unless well and 

 richly made, were better left alone. Anchors, crowns, 

 baskets and bouquets are all used for the same purpose. 

 In any of these forms, the slightly rounding surface is 

 the best ; that is to say, the flowers in the wreath, cross, 

 etc., must neither be flat nor to highly rounded.. [Funeral 

 flowers are less used now than when this was written, 

 owing probably to the fact that some dozen years ago it 

 was carried to such an excess as to be a heavy tax on the 

 poorer friends of the family in aflliction. But the turn- 

 ing point in the tide of fashion was when one of New 



