222 



REPORT ON THE 



promise of fresh beauties that a flower, inexhaustible in its 

 powers of variation, naturally affords us. 



As an experimentalist I will adhere to the practical : use bare 

 description as little as I may, and bring young hopes downstairs 

 from the nursery realms of imagination as considerately as I can. 



PROPERTIES. 



Form. — The first property to be worked for in the Auricula 

 is, I submit, the perfection of that form upon which the colour- 

 attributes of the flower will be the most effectively displayed. 

 Colour can always be worked up to, and the florist may tarry 

 patiently for this until he has the form of grace whereon to call 

 it into play. I always choose as the maternal parent of Auricula 

 seed the best flowers I have in breadth, circularity, flatness, sub- 

 stance, and smoothness of petal ; while for male parentage I do 

 not depart further than must be from form. Petals cannot be 

 too broad, so long as they will expand equally and kindly. If 

 they do not meet through narrowness or roughness the beautiful 

 design of the colour zones is interrupted by vacant spaces signi- 

 fying nothing. 



The edged classes and the selfs have each their own type of 

 error in respect of form. In the " edges " it is generally a 

 pointedness of petal ; in the selfs a central notch or heart-shaped 

 depression. In the edged flowers the fault has long been 

 noticed and regretted, and has now been brilliantly overcome, 

 especially from the appearing of Lancashire's Lancashire Hero 

 in 1846 onwards ; but among the selfs until recent times there 

 was hardly an exception to the rule of notch. The indented 

 petal of the self seemed silently allowed to pass as the typical 

 petal of the class. 



Selfs. — For improvement of the self Auricula, my experience 

 convinces me that the best results are to be obtained through 

 entirely self parentage. I would not say that a correct self 

 flower has never come from edged parents, for Mr. Campbell 

 believed that his brown self Pizarro, the best flower in the class 

 at the time, was raised from a green-edged parent, aud Mr. 

 iSiruonite that a good blue self of his was obtained from a white- 

 edged seedling. 



Certainly, however, my own best selfs have sprung from 

 purely self parents, and latterly from a self descent comparatively 



