CARNATION C ON FE RE X < ' E 



480 



«xtol liis favourite flower, as lie doffs his cap and shouts Florcat 

 Regina Fiorina ! It is worthy of his highest devotion and 

 service. We who love the Carnation maintain that if any flower 

 can be said to be the idol of the masses it is the Carnation — in 

 whose honour we are holding high festival to-day. And it can 

 boast of aristocratic admirers also, for did not Sarah, Duchess of 

 Marlborough, display great partiality for the Carnation ? The 

 gossip in the society papers of her day declared that she had 

 every year about two hundred pots of them, esteeming them as 

 her successor at Blenheim does in these days his Orchids ; and 

 she is reported as frequently saying that nothing gave her so 

 much pleasure as the sight of her Carnations in full bloom, 

 which she preferred to all the greenhouse plants in her posses- 

 sion. And in cur day the Malmaison and ether Carnations 

 repose as button-holes upon the breast of many a one who can 

 prefer the claim of long descent, and whose blood is as blue as the 

 most regal Delphinium. We who are to-day attending the levee 

 the Carnation holds in the historic gardens at Chiswick justify 

 our laudation of it on the grounds that it is popular with all 

 classes, that it is easily cultivated, that it abundantly repays 

 good culture, that to beauty of form and expression it adds a 

 delightful variation in character, that it combines brilliant hues 

 with delicate tints, and, as of supreme importance, it perfumes 

 the air with grateful fragrance, which rises up through the fine 

 pores of its scented petals. Let me guard against any possible 

 assumption that, in pleading for the recognition of the Carnation 

 as a border plant, I am in any way opposing the practice or 

 manifesting hostility to the methods of the florist, who grows 

 his plants in pots in order to secure fine exhibition flowers. 

 Nothing of the kind. The florist — meaning thereby tbe culti- 

 vator for exhibition — is as much an advocate of border culture for 

 the Carnation as I am, or anyone else. I state this much because 

 it has been made to appear that the florist cultivates a number of 

 varieties in pots that need to be so treated, making them — so his 

 critics say — greenhouse plants, because they are weakly and 

 delicate, and unless so treated would surely die. In such strains 

 of playful banter some writers are found gently tickling the 

 susceptibilities of our floricultural brethren who make up our 

 Carnation shows. Nothing can be further from the truth, except 

 it is this type of writer. Many of the best varieties of bizarre and 



G 



