80 
BOTANICAL INDEX. 
to its culture by myself, it has acquired world renown as a dower ornament of the 
garden. It is my endeavor, through large assortments of new seeds and plants, al- 
ways to grow more perfect varieties. Any person who has ever visited my present 
Dahlia garden and seen the blooming of the dowers in the month of August and the 
beginning of September, with their many thousands of dowers of various colors 
(like a variegated carpet) and complete forms, always love to observe the place of 
pilgrimage, and gladly confess that the Dahlia belongs to the most gorgeous and 
graceful of all cultured dowers, and through the attentive care it has received, is 
worthy of the greatest wonder. 
The following brief history of the Dahlia, is taken from Comstock’s Illustrated 
Botany, and will also be found very intersting : 
“Few dowers are now better known, or more generally cultivated, than the 
Dahlia; but notwithstanding its present popularity, its early history is not generally 
known. The first printed account of the Dahlia is said to be in Hernandez’s History 
of Mexico, published in Madrid, in 1G51; in which two species are figured, under the 
name of Acocotli. Both of these are single dowers, and one appears to be D. crocata, 
and the other D. variabilis or superflua. There was, however, an Italian work on the 
Natural History of Mexico, published at Rome about the same time, which had not 
only a single but a double Dahlia figured in it. In both these works the plants are 
described as having tuberous roots, of a strong and bitter taste; and Hernandez says 
that the Mexican used these roots medicinally as a tonic. It is not a little singular, 
that a plant so showy as the Dahlia, should have remained from this time unnoticed 
for a period of more than one hundred and thirty years. Yet such was the case; 
for the next mention of it is made by M. Menonville, who was sent to Mexico by the 
French Government, in 1787, to endeavor to steal the cochineal insect and plant from 
the Spaniards. This botanist only saw some Dahlias growing in a garden near 
Guaxaca, and he describes them as having large aster-like flowers, stems as tall as a 
man, and leaves like those of the elder. In 1789, D. variabilis was discovered in a 
wild state in Mexico by Baron Humboldt, and sent by him to the Abbe Cavanilles, 
then Professor of Botany at Madrid. The Marchioness of Bute was at that time a 
patroness of floriculture in England, and being in correspondence with the profes- 
sors at the different botanic gardens in Europe, Cavanilles sent her some of the seeds 
the same year that he received them. Oue of the seedlings raised by Cavanilles 
produced semi-double tlowers in October, 1790, and a figure of it was published in 
the following January in Cavanilles’ leones Plantarum, in which the genus was nam- 
ed Dahlia, in honor of Andrew Dahl, a Sweedish botanist; and the -plant figured, 
which is the same as that now called D. variabilis, was cliristianed D. pinnata. Cav- 
anilles afterwards figured in the same work two other Dahlias, which he called D. 
rosea, and D. cocinnea. Tubers and seeds of these three kinds were sent to Paris in 
1802, under the idea that the tubers would be eatable; but they were found so bitter 
and pungent, that they “ disgusted both man and beast. In the mean time, Lady 
Bute had raised, from the seeds sent her by Cavanilles, some young plants, which 
she kept in pots in a green-house ; but in the course of two or three years afterwards, 
they all died without ripening se.eds. In 1S02, an English nurseryman named Fraser 
obtained in Paris some of the seeds of D. cocinnea, sent from Madrid, but the flowers 
produced by his seedlings were brightorange instead of scarlet. Mr. Fraser’s plants 
were kept in a green-house, and died without ripening seed. In 1904, M. Thonin 
published a paper on the Dahlia, in which lie suggested propagating the plant by 
dividing its fascicles of tuberous roots ; keeping the roots in a state of rest during 
the winter, and allowing the plants to have large pots full of rich earth. In the 
spr ing of the same year. Lady Holland sent to England, from Madrid, some seeds, 
which were sown by Mr. Buonaiuti, librarian to Lord Holland, on a hot-bed at Hol- 
land House, when some of the seedlings flowered in the autumn of the same year. 
In 1807, Mr. Salisbury tried some Dahlias for the first time in the open ground in his 
garden. Thunberg’s plant, however, was named in honor of an English botanist, 
Mr. Dale, and was called Dalea. In 1S08, Count Lelieur began to pay some attention 
to the culture of the Dahlia in the neighborhood of Paris, and lie introduced into 
the garden at St. Cloud, from Malmaison, three varieties, from which he raised num- 
erous others. When the continent was thrown open, by the approach of the Allies 
to Paris, in 1814, the British amateurs and florists who visited it, were astonished at 
the beauty of the Dahlias in the French gardens; and siilee that period, the cultiva- 
tion of Dahlias has been common, and many varieties have been raised, of great 
beauty of form and brilliancy of color.” 
The wind at Omaha recently performed a curious freak. Florence and Willow 
lakes, north of the city, were blown nearly dry, and the ground in the vicinity was 
covered with dead fish blown out of the water. 
