THE FLORIST, AND 



There are some fastidious and hypercritical people who condemn 

 these varieties as departures from nature — as an interference of art ; 

 to these we have a most opportune reply. In the appendix, written 

 by a scholar of Trinity, Cambridge, to the " Account of the British 

 colonization of New Zealand, the writer says, " There may be those 

 who would look with apprehension on any intermixture of foreign- 

 ers with the native race, from its supposed tendency to obliterate a 

 peculiar and interesting variety of the human species * * * 

 This feeling is natural and amiable, but it partakes of the gentle 

 prejudice of Perdita, in expressing her distaste for the "piedness" or 

 variegated character of carnations and other flowers, which she ac- 

 knowledges to be the fairest of the season, but refuses to admit into 

 her garden. Polixenes, to whom her conversation is addressed, in- 

 quires — - 



Wherefore, gentle maiden, 

 Do you neglect them ? 



Perdita. For I have heard it said, 

 There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares 

 With great creating nature. 



Polixenes. Say there be, 

 Yet nature is made better by no mean, 

 But nature makes that mean; so, o'er that art 

 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 

 That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 

 A gentler scion to the wildest stock, 

 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 

 By bud of noble race ; this is an art 

 Which does mend nature, change it rather ; but 

 The art itself is nature. Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sctne 3. 



* * * God has so fashioned man as to empower man to fashion 

 nature ; and so to fashion nature as to draw from her hidden ele- 

 ments forms of far greater beauty and utility than in her present 

 state of imperfection are offered to us by nature herself. It would 

 be difficult to select a fruit, a grain or a vegetable which has not 

 been raised to its present value by artificial means ; and wherever 

 we turn we are reminded of the wonders which are effected in the 

 floral kingdom by modern horticulture." Who would prefer the 

 common crab to the pippin or bellefleur ; the insignificant fruit of 



