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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



us •who maintain that the perfect " flame " is the character more 

 difficult and rare, and open to more shortcomings than the 

 " feather," whose responsibilities at the petal edges the flamed 

 flower has to bear, in conjunction with its own, on the body of the 

 petal. These properties, greatly varied in colouring and style, 

 form a floral picture of which the eye of the florist is never 

 ■weary ; though no doubt herein the non-florist critic will again 

 find us ruling in the tyranny of narrow lines and harsh exactions. 

 His presumable preference for the Tulip, splashed and blotched 

 as wildly as if a bottle of black or red ink had been maliciously 

 spilt over it, 



Y\~e neither love nor hate. 



The flower is capable of far more exquisite work than that — ■ 

 work more difficult, if I may use the word — work, too, that varies 

 in detail every year, though I freely admit that our friend's ideal 

 Tulip has its convulsions of Nature in an annual re-arrange- 

 ment of its blotches — its inky islands in a white or yellow sea. 

 Continuing still 



In ways that are dark, and in tricks that are vain, 



in the estimation of our critics ; — the Tulip must possess neither 

 less nor more than six petals. Four make a square flower, five 

 and seven a lop-sided one, and eight incKne to the octagonal. 

 The normal form of the Tulip cup is round, and in our particular 

 type it should possess a good shoulder, with petals level at the 

 top, and neither reflexing outwards nor curving inwards at their 

 upper edges. The base of the cup inside must be white or 

 Yellow, according to the class of the flower, and free from any 

 stain ; and the filaments, upon which six bold black anthers 

 stand, must be pure as the ground colour. This quality of 

 purity has been gained after very many years of patient work 

 with seedlings, and is indispensable now. The precise propor- 

 tion for the cup of the flower has been a sorely vexed question. 

 Anything shorter than the half of a hollow ball would give the 

 flower a cropped appearance, and anything much longer would 

 make it look narrow and top-heaYy. The practical solution is 

 that, although we would rather not, we still have to tolerate 

 some long-cupped and narrow- shouldered varieties for lack of 

 shorter ones possessing the same brilliant qualities in other pro- 

 perties. In other matters of form, the petals should be smooth 



