MR. T. MOORE ON JUDGING NEW PLANTS. 



99 



XXI. On Judging New Plants. 

 By Thos. Moore, Esq., E.L.S. &c. 



The laws or rules which regulate the bestowal of awards on 

 new plants, intuitively familiar as they are to those who have had 

 experience in their application, are for the most part unwritten, 

 and hence unknown and unappreciated by a great majority of those 

 who nevertheless take an interest in the exhibition of this class 

 of subjects. That they are unwritten, is no doubt mainly owing 

 to the infinite variety of subjects which in these days is comprised 

 under the term new plants, in consequence of which it becomes 

 necessary that special rules should be devised for each kind of 

 plant, if we would define exactly the characteristics which should 

 be presented, in order that it may appear in the much desired 

 form which constitutes ideal perfection. 



The more popular and commonly cultivated flowers, however, 

 especially the class known as florists' flowers, are not in this posi- 

 tion. Being comparatively few in number, and having long 

 engaged the attention of growers, there have been framed for 

 many, if not for most of them, certain intelligible rules by which 

 those who have the knowledge necessary to apply them can ascer- 

 tain with ease how near respectively they approach the standard 

 of perfection which has been set up. These rules are printed in 

 a shilling volume, entitled ' Grlenny's Properties of Elowers,' and 

 are received with little question as floral law in respect to the 

 features which constitute perfection in the particular flowers to 

 which they apply. 



Notwithstanding, however, that the points which in these cases 

 make up this idea of perfection are very carefully, and in most 

 cases very judiciously, laid down in the book to which reference 

 has just been made, there has, I believe, been no attempt made to 

 work out the comparative merits of plants and flowers — whether 

 it be the relative merits of the different varieties of the same flower 

 as compared amongst themselves, or whether it be the intrinsic 

 merits of individual species as compared with any standard that 

 may be set up — by assigning marks in proportion to a given 

 scale for the separate features of merit they present, so that the 

 total number of marks gained should indicate absolute merit. 

 And yet this is obviously the only exact way of arriving at a cor- 

 rect estimate of the true merit of each. 



It is something of this kind — some general scheme forjudging 

 plants and flowers by means of the points which can fairly be 



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