THE FLOKIST'S TULIP. 



105 



on the edge, and of good substance, that the colours upon them 

 may appear dense, and the flower keep its shape. Breadth of 

 petal is also a most valuable property ; and but for sufficiency of 

 this, the flower, as it expands and grows, would show strips of 

 daylight through the base of the cup, a deadly fault known as 

 <£ quartering." 



Now that I have touched upon form and marking in the 

 florist's Tulip, I would say that it was for long a controversy as 

 to which of these two great properties should have precedence 

 of the other. In those days, and speaking generally, the Southern 

 florists assigned the first place to form, while the Northern men 

 looked first to marking, and could not resist " a fine feather." I 

 have always thought that these high virtues should be accounted 

 twin graces of the Tulip, which we cannot justly separate, or fairly 

 set in rivalry to each other. We want them both, and should 

 work until we have them both combined in all our best Tulips. 

 The absence of the one always detracts from the worth and 

 beauty of the flower, in a way for which the presence of the other 

 does not compensate. If they had been accorded an " equal 

 first," and florists, instead of writing and contesting, had set to 

 work unitedly for seedlings, in whose veins would run the blood 

 of parents possessing between them both these high properties, 

 and had had the courage to discard all their own seedlings that 

 showed no advancement towards this combination, it would have 

 been gained. 



At present, marking is ahead of form, and no beauty of 

 colouring looks its best upon bad form. I believe the absolutely 

 perfect Tulip has yet to be raised, even so far as we can see, to 

 say nothing of what the flower may yet have to reveal. We are 

 in much need of both feathered and flamed " Eoses " of shorter 

 cup and better shoulder, and the same weakness exists in the 

 Byblcemen class, in which the feathered flowers, highly valued 

 and difficult to obtain, have but few among them of good form. 

 There are some very correct seedlings in a few collections, but it 

 takes a first-rate Tulip long to travel far from home. 



Looking at the prize lists of our Eoyal National Tulip Society, 

 I gladly recognise a streaky dawn of better things ; but they are 

 yet too full of old sorts possessing faults of form. From my own 

 experience of years with seedling Tulips, I find them kindly 

 inclined to come true to points, compared with such a flower as 



D 



