THE ORIGIN OF THE FLORIST'S DAHLIA. 



9 



The history of the flower discloses the fact that the Dahlia, 

 in common with other pets of the florist, has attained to its 

 grandeur of complete doubleness by degrees. There is no 

 instance known of a florist's flower becoming such by one change 

 only, for the remodelling to which the florist subjects his chosen 

 subjects, is a slow, and in some respects a tedious process, de- 

 manding immense patience and perseverance, and constituting 

 thereby a mental discipline of the highest value imaginable, one 

 parallel fact being that florists are good men, and have ever 

 been such ; there is no example of an exception, unless it be 

 that of a man who has fallen from his high estate through 

 decline of sympathy for his once favourite flowers. 



It is a custom with a certain class of persons, who appear 

 incapable of grasping more than half an idea at any time, to rail 

 at the florists and their flowers, the first as a kind of malefactor 

 engaged in suppressing vegetable vitality, the second as the 

 monstrous products of misdirected and perhaps iniquitous zeal. 

 If it be legitimate to ask, " Why alter the natural form of any 

 flower ? " it cannot be illegitimate to ask, " Why cultivate any 

 flower, seeing that cultivation will inevitably alter it, and is 

 intended to do so ?" It is in the nature of man to impress upon 

 the forms of things he is interested in his own idea of what they 

 ought to be. We are not satisfied with wild Asparagus or wild 

 Roses ; we alter them by cultivation. The architect imitates 

 the forms of trees in his stone constructions, and the mason who 

 gives the finishing touch to the Corinthian capital adds an Acan- 

 thus leaf in a fashion of his own, and not as it appears in 

 nature. The artist who excels in painting flowers according to 

 nature mixes the flowers of spring with those of autumn in order 

 to secure certain effects, while for decorative purposes he con- 

 ventionalises, or, in other words, presents them in impossible 

 attitudes, with fantastic variations of form, and wins the praises 

 of those same sublime aesthetes who denounce the florists and 

 their flowers. The life of floriculture is in the changes it effects, 

 but these are subject to rules that have nature for their founda- 

 tion ; and the double Dahlia illustrates the whole case, for 

 cultivation only encourages nature in certain directions, and 

 selection does the rest. 



The achievements of the florist involve him in a complication 

 of difficulties. The perfect Dahlia — supposing such a thing to 



