THE CULTURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF PRIMULAS. 47 
on similar lines, but extending to hybrids, by Herr Stein, of 
Breslau. 
From nomenclatm-e I pass to more practical matter. 
When noting the reasons which make against the popularity 
of the group as garden-flowers, might I not have added the 
unnatural manner and " setting" in which hitherto they have 
been generally shown ? 
I will own to a doubt which I think I have never yet been 
bold enough to breathe in Auricula committee (where I am 
already heretic enough on some matters), that even our best 
florists' Auriculas, and especially our choice Alpines and Fancies, 
would look none the worse if we mended our ways in our mode 
of staging and exhibiting them. 
Granted, at least for argument's sake, that skill in the pro- 
duction of fine specimens or of new varieties be the chiefs or even 
the sole, thing for the judges to consider in their awards. I 
am not, therefore, completely convinced that the show should 
consist so largely of rectangular batches of pots, and that any- 
thing like setting or natural arrangement of the plants, or the 
provision of natural " carpetters " for them, should be almost or 
generally " tabooed " in every Auricula class. 
I am on delicate ground I know, but the subject wants 
ventilation, and that is why I raise it. I am bold enough to 
think that even our best named Auriculas would, to nine persons 
out of ten, look better if they rose from a bed of, say, moss or 
Saxifrages. Even an exhibit of noble silver-leaved Show " 
Auriculas springing from a white silk carpet of Antennaria 
would please most of us more than when severely marshalled 
in rows — each pot "nakedly and shamelessly " exposed. 
Be the case as regards florists' Auriculas as it may, I argue 
with confidence that when we come to more natural flowers, 
like Primroses and Primula species, excuse for such modes of 
staging as at present obtain is, to say the least, very difficult. 
Surely, without affecting close imitation of nature, where such 
is impossible, we can suggest nature, and can often by simple 
means make an exhibit more pretty and natural as a whole ; 
something approaching to a plant-picture, rather than so many 
" plants in pots." And the same plan of natural arrangement 
may well be carried also into the Alpine house, even to the frame. 
On the rockery it already largely obtains. 
