THE WORSHIP OF FALSE GODS 245 



very many cases they either deliberately teach, or at 

 any rate allow to be seen with their sanction, what 

 cannot fail to be debasing to public taste. 



I will take just two examples to show how obvious 

 methods of leading taste are not only overlooked, but 

 even perverted; for it is not only in the individual 

 blooms that much of the show-teaching is unworthy, 

 but also in the training of the plants ; so that a plant 

 that by nature has some beauty of form, is not 

 encouraged or even allowed to develop that beauty, but 

 is trained into some shape that is not only foreign to 

 its own nature, but is absolutely ugly and ungraceful, 

 and entirely stupid. The natural habit of the Chrys- 

 anthemum is to grow in the form of several upright 

 stems. They spring up sheaf-wise, straight upright for 

 a time, and only bending a little outward above, to 

 give room for the branching heads of bloom. The 

 stems are rather stiff, because they are half woody at 

 the base. In the case of pot-plants it would seem 

 right only so far to stake or train them as to give the 

 necessary support by a few sticks set a little outward 

 at the top, so that each stem may lean a little over, 

 after the manner of a Bamboo, when their clustered 

 heads of flower would be given enough room, and be 

 seen to the greatest advantage. 



But at shows, the triumph of the training art seems 

 to be to drag the poor thing round and round over an 

 internal scaffolding of sticks, with an infinite number 

 of ties and cross-braces, so that it makes a sort of 



