106 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the Auricula. Thanks to those who have worked before us, we 

 have flowers of great purity to start with, and that quality is so 

 impressed upon the flower now, that a stained base and filaments 

 are not a very common fault. Those of form and substance are 

 distinctly more so. The last two points are decided so soon as 

 ever the young seedlings bloom ; but whether perfect marking 

 also will be gained is a question of further, and indeed indefinite, 

 time. For though the seedlings were certainly raised from 

 flamed or feathered parents, they bloom, with very rare excep- 

 tions, in some plain self colour ; and under cover of this, all 

 marking lies a hidden mystery perhaps for years. The flower 

 will, however, suddenly put off this "undress" coat of colour,, 

 and assume the utterly different and more exalted character of 

 the feathered or flamed estate. Form is unaltered, though stature 

 is diminished. Only in colour the old order changeth, except 

 that the circle of white or yellow at the base continues, as the 

 heart and type of the new ground colour of the petals. Cin- 

 derella's fairy change was not so astonishing, complete, and 

 beautiful as this new array of the rectified seedling Tulip. It 

 is no chance sport, such as we may see in the Chrysanthemum, 

 Carnation, or Kose. It is not that the original or " mother 

 colour " is gathered together as it were, and in a shade intensi- 

 fied, arranged in feathery patterns on the petals. What change 

 comes over the flower 



Eings out the old ; rings in the new. 



The seedling Tulip may have a much longer childhood of 

 colour than it had a childhood of age, and that was some five or 

 six years. The change may even have come during some year of 

 its bloomless childhood, which we can discern by the peculiar 

 mottling in the leaf-tints that mark the rectified Tulip, but never 

 the solid green of the unchanged self. This metamorphosis of 

 colour, if I may for a moment be allowed a term that strictly 

 belongs to change of form, is something for which I can recall 

 •no true parallel in any other flower. No analogy is close enough. 

 The young bird moults the fluff and feathers of its chickenhood, 

 and the grub becomes the perfect insect. But these have all 

 their time for change, and the Tulip has not. This marvellous 

 attribute of the Tulip is well known to every grower ; and the 

 novice accepts it as true, with the very milk of human kindness 

 in florist friends who start him with a few good Tulip bulbs. 



