SUBSTITUTION. 



he " 'mums " and the grass had an all-summer fight for 

 supremacy. On remarking that they did not have much 

 cultivation, we were assured that the bed was prepared 

 at considerable expense and the plants set out, we forget 

 whether he said according to Henderson or Hoyle, after 

 which, to use his own expression, he "let 'em rip." 

 From the drenched and bedraggled appearance of the 

 blooms it was difficult to tell what they were, but suffi- 

 cient of the characteristics were left so that a practised 

 eye could see that all was not so bad as represented. 

 The varieties were, in the main, true to name, and with a 

 higher cultivation and a judicious thinning of buds and 

 branches, but little, if any cause would be found for 

 complaint. A lady had sent to my hotel a box of chrys- 

 anthemum blooms to have them correctly named, as she 

 said they were all sent her under wrong names. As she 

 did not live a great ways off, I walked around and began 

 naming the varieties as best I could. I had not preceded 

 far when the good lady lost all her faith in my knowledge 

 of 'mum nomenclature, for she said that Robert Bottom- 

 ley was not a bit like the one Mrs. Jones had sent her 

 from a Louisville house, and her Lilian B. Bird was 

 nothing like Mrs. Smith's, both of which were sent out 

 by different houses under the same name. The truth of 

 it was her Lilian B. Bird was true to name, but she was dis- 

 satisfied because it was unlike a large vigorous plant of 

 President Arthur, which Mrs. Smith was growing as Lili- 

 an B. Bird, under which name the lady said it was sent her 

 by a reliable house that she had dealt with for years. 



Such little incidents as these go to prove that sub- 

 stitution is yet carried on to some extent, and complaints 



Fig. I. Narcissus bicolor, Horsfieldii. 



in many cases may justly be made, but that complaint 

 always goes to where it of right belongs, is a matter of 

 extreme doubt. In villages and small communities 

 where no practical florist is at hand to decide upon the 

 the truth of varieties to catalogue description, things 



are apt to get badly mixed up. As judged from a cri- 

 terion that is wrong, nothing but chaos can reign, and he 

 who substitutes most may, in many cases, fare best, pro- 

 viding the substitution is done with some knowledge of 

 the similarity of varieties substituted to those ordered, 

 and not an indiscriminate labelling of plants to suit the 

 order. Priority, in many cases, has much to do in these 

 village tribunals in passing upon the correct nomencla- 

 ture of varieties of plants possessing some similarity of 

 form or color. A lady may, for instance, have in her 

 garden for years, a rose, a chrysanthemum, or a dahlia, 

 and will have known them under some particular name 

 that may be entirely erroneous during all this time. She 

 may receive a plant from the florist's belonging to either 

 one of these classes named, true to its section and origi- 

 nality, with a similar name but a different color or form 

 to its namesake that had priority in her garden. To say 

 that the new comer could usurp the former favorite of 

 its name would be upsetting the order of things generally 

 found in small gardens, where the housewife is boss and 

 the fire shovel the chief implement of defense against 

 the marauding weeds. Amateurs not having sufficient 

 knowledge of the different varieties of plants should be 

 slow to find fault for the misnaming of varieties unless 

 backed in their judgment by some one more competent 

 to detect the inaccuracies in labeling of the varieties to 

 be passed upon. They should also remember that all 

 catalogue descriptions and dimensions are taken from 

 plants grown in the highest possible state of cultivation, 

 and where all circumstances favor the highest possible 

 development as to size, form, and color, and that poorly 

 cultivated and improperly cared-for plants can not be 

 expected to produce the results claimed for them under 

 a higher state of cultivation. To produce plants and 

 flowers to come up to catalogue descriptions where ex- 

 aggeration is not indulged in, requires a cultivation equal 

 to that under which the plants were produced from which 

 dimensions and descriptions were taken. 



Plants grown in the open air in the southern states, 

 especially chrysanthemums, where they are bleached by 

 the warm sunshine and drenched by the heavy fall rains, 

 will never produce the delicacy of shade and color as is 

 their wont when cultivated under glass further north. 



The florists are placed at a disadvantage in all of these 

 little transactions with small buyers among their amateur 

 customers. Let them be ever so confident that their 

 plants are sent out true to name, if complaint should come 

 they cannot dispute it — it would be ruinous to their busi- 

 ness to do so, and for this reason thousands of dollars 

 worth of plants are annually given away to satisfy imagi- 

 nary wrongs, as it is conceded the best policy among re- 

 tail catalogue houses to satisfy, where possible, all claims 

 made, even when the justice of them is most doubtful. 

 A knowledge of this policy by unscrupulous people 

 causes the florist at times to be taken advantage of. 



And thus it is in floriculture; many disappointments 

 and reverses are found both by those who sell and those 

 who buy. To either, the millenium has not come. 



Tennessee. Jas. Morton. 



