344 



7^HE NOVELTIES. 



Why should we not be content with our own pure, 

 sparkling, wholesome brands, which never leave a head 

 or heart ache — Howells, Aldrich, Lathrop, Craddock, 

 Hardy, Phelps, Stockton, Harte, Woolson, Wallace, 

 Warner (C. D., of course), and a host of others, too 

 numerous to mention ? 



Fancy the fate of the pure, sweet flower doomed to 

 bear the unsavory name of George Sand, a woman gifted 

 with genius of transcendent order, yet who wilfully and 

 recklessly prostituted her brilliant intellect to the vile 

 mission of rendering immorality attractive by the magic 

 art of her wondrous pen ! The small minority of her 

 works written in purer vein are her masterpieces, and 

 prove that her career would have been crowned with 

 unqualified success, had she not unfortunately obeyed 

 the perverse instincts of her lawless nature, while her 

 shameless life was an active, realistic outrage on moral 

 law and social decency. Her cultured apologists pro- 

 test that she shall be honored, because, forsooth, the 

 possession of genius atones for moral obliquity, no mat- 

 ter how flagrant, on the part of those privileged beings, 

 whose exalted qualities exempt them from an observance 

 of those salutary laws which form the safeguard of mor- 

 als and of society ! Such doctrine sounds rather pagan- 

 ish for the nineteenth century. 



Before going back to pentstemons, it may be well to 

 say that after all, the matter of names resolves itself into 

 a simple question of taste, which will not admit of argu- 

 ment ; consequently Lemoine must be granted a perfect 

 right to honor whomsoever he chooses. And we, in the 

 meantime, can quietly draw ample consolation from the 

 fact that, no matter how odious the names may be, his 

 flowers are always beautiful, oft-times to an original and 

 extraordinary degree. 



The writer had on several occasions received plants 

 from him, which produced flowers of exceptionally fine 

 quality ; therefore his confidence in Lemoine was un- 

 bounded, and his next order included a packet of pents- 

 temon seed, collection d'elite. They were sown early in 

 April in shallow window boxes, from which they were 

 subsequently transplanted to open ground, and, at the 

 end of the season, this is what he wrote to a dear, dainty 

 little periodical — now, alas, defunct; or rather, it has 

 ceased to exist as an entity, but whose floricultural soul 

 has happily transmigrated to the pages of The American 

 Garden, which has proved to be the horticultural elys- 

 ium for the disembodied etherial essence of several sim- 

 ilar publications — and truly they could not have found a 

 happier "hunting ground." He said: "I discovered 

 this season that the pentstemon is a very desirable flower. 

 Among a lot of bulbs and seeds received from Victor 

 Lemoine last spring, was a packet of pentstemon seeds. 

 They were sown in April, and the plants were in full 

 bloom in September, thus showing it to be an annual as 

 well as a perennial. The lovely open, gloxinia-shaped 

 flowers came in various shades of crimson, purple, ma- 

 roon, carmine, mauve, pink and vivid rose ; some with 

 white throats, others self colored, delicately veined and 

 mottled. The spikes of loosely arranged flowers pos- 



sessed the graceful habit and simple refined beauty' so 

 characteristic of lovely wild flowers, while the great size, 

 the symmetry and brilliant tints betrayed the high-bred 

 qualities fostered by careful selection and the patient art 

 of the skillful professional florist. Those familiar with 

 the pentstemons of ten years ago will be surprised to 

 note the vast improvement intelligent culture has ac- 

 complished." 



Every season since, he has made it a point to have a 

 generous supply of pentstemons from the same source, 

 and his experience sustains him in confirming the ver- 

 dict given four years ago. — F. Lance. 



Some last Year's Novelties in the Hands of an 

 Amateur. — Buying novelties and investing in a "grab- 

 bag" are kindred experiences. The difference is really 

 in favor of the latter, because it involves but the paying 

 of five or ten cents a " grab," while, when grasping after 

 novelties, one is far more likely to pay a half-dollar, or 

 more, every time he makes an effort to secure something 

 new and really valuable. 



Lessons from experience, these ; still, I think it is 

 possible to so learn the characteristics of the various 

 firms, to become so familiar with their various degrees 

 of ecstasy over new things, as to be able to form a very 

 close estimate of the probable value of the new candi- 

 dates for public favor which they describe. Those firms 

 which are so conservative that they never place novel- 

 ties in their lists the first year that the new claimants 

 are offered at retail, and those which are careful to state 

 that they give the originator's description, can be trust- 

 ed ; others, which plunge deeply into the pool of praise- 

 ful adjectives and ladle them out in their proper quali- 

 fying positions with scant regard, or none at all, for that 

 truth which is indeed rarer, if not stranger than fiction, 

 when spoken of novelties, would better be tested with a 

 few grains of salt. 



Plants of a number of the finest chrysanthemums of 

 the previous autumn exhibitions — most of them then 

 sold at retail for the first time — were sent to the writer 

 in the spring of 1890. Although from a first-class house, 

 they were thickly inhabited with that serene squatter, 

 the black aphis, and no after efforts sufficed to completely 

 dislodge him. Hence the plants suffered to some extent. 

 Shasta alone, with its low stocky growth and its large 

 white blooms so thickly set with needle petals, was fully 

 satisfactory, although Lilian Bird and Mr. H. Cannell 

 would no doubt have been so had they not been lifted at 

 the most critical time, which caused the blooms to come 

 deformed. Snowball bloomed well, and the blooms were 

 perfect, although of scarcely more than one-third the 

 size that it showed on exhibition. Alaska, Belle Poite- 

 vine, and above all, Mrs. Hardy, grew so poorly as to be 

 practically worthless. Mrs. Hardy was lifted early, but 

 the few buds set blasted without an effort to open ; now 

 the wiseacres are just beginning to tell us that my lady 

 must not be planted out at all, but kept potted through- 

 out the s^eason. 



In spite of the claims of later varieties, one house 

 describes H. Cannell as "perhaps the finest large 



