EXHIBITING AND JUDGING 63 



the express companies. Flowers to be shown in short 

 stemmed classes may be safely and more closely packed 

 by tying in this way. Fig. 16 shows a box of flowers 

 so packed, which, after transportation for a thousand 

 miles, came out so perfect that they secured ninety- 

 five out of a possible one hundred points. Another aid 

 to maintaining freshness is to enclose the ends of the 

 stems in rubber capped glass receptacles containing 

 water an% made expressly for this purpose. The 

 flowers in the box illustrated in Fig. 16 had the ends 

 of their stems wrapped around with wet moss secured 

 with paper tied around. 



A method of packing occasionally seen at the 

 eastern exhibitions is with flowers standing erect in 

 rows, each row tied to a cleat below the flowers and at 

 the base, with the ends of the stems resting in a tray 

 at the bottom of the box, filled with wet moss, kept in 

 position by a covering of small meshed wire netting. 

 This is a cumbersome method, requiring a very deep 

 box for long stemmed flowers, and with no manifest 

 advantages over the usual way of packing as here 

 described. 



STAGING THE EXHIBITS 



The conditions of competition govern the staging. 

 It rests with the exhibitor entirely to comply with the 

 conditions as stated, and adhere to them to the letter. 

 The careful exhibitor who is going to stage a vase of 

 six, twelve or fifty flowers, takes along a few additional 

 flowers to provide for accidents. The careless exhibitor 

 often stages the extra flowers brought along, and in the 

 rush and excitement of preparation forgets to remove 

 them. "Don't forget" is the only way to avoid the 

 chagrin of seeing the word "Disqualified" attached to 

 the entry card of what might have been a winning 

 exhibit but for failure to comply with the condition 



