90 Familiar garden flowers. 



Parkinson figures the double hollyhock under the name o£ 

 Malva rosea multiplex, a name it might still bear with 

 propriety, for it is a true mallow, and may be grown for 

 fibre or fodder with possible advantage. As a garden 

 flower it attained its highest fame in the first half of the 

 present century, Lord Hawke, as an amateur, and Mr. 

 Chater, of Saffron Walden, as a trade cultivator, being its 

 best representatives. As an exhibition flower it ranked 

 equal with the dahlia, and good collections comprised 

 flowers of all colours, the size, the form, and the fashion 

 thereof being truly sumptuous. But the eclipse came. It 

 is but a paltry shadow that for a season blots the sun from 

 the heavens. It was a paltry fungus, finding a home first 

 on the common mallow of the fields, and thence spreading 

 to the garden, that caused the eclipse of the hollyhock. 

 Beyond all doubt the railways were the proximate cause of 

 the mischief, for on railway banks the mallows run riot, 

 and form the breeding grounds for the pest that for 

 a time excluded the hollyhock from our autumnal exhibi- 

 tions. In view of the facts, we can with emphasis repeat 

 the advice of Thomas Tusser, who, occasionally, in his 

 " Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry," says " destroy 

 mallow." The grower of the hollyhock should allow no 

 wild mallows to come near his garden. 



It is possible the cultivators contributed in some degree 

 to the eclipse. The new varieties were in great demand, 

 at prices decidedly remunerative, and it was the custom to 

 propagate them in a high temperature, and often, with a 

 view to increase the plants rapidly, the more expensive 

 named kinds were grafted on roots of unnamed seedlings ; 

 and in order to promote a perfect junction of the graft with 

 the stock, it was necessary to keep them for a time in a 



