THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
85 
the light as equally as possible, but take care to have enough about 
the boundary line. Always work up to your best flowers : do not 
use them to bring others out, but, while staging nothing but what 
is good, lead up by judicious arrangement of colours to your 
thumpers, to insure their counting their full value iu the judging. 
A little dressmg will be required as you proceed, and you will have 
to learn the art by practice, although in essence it is most simple, 
and essentially honest. You are not to stick petals into flowers that 
show goggle eyes, but you may cleverly clip off the decayed edge of 
a petal, or twitch a petal out if necessary. A very large Malmaison, 
nc: quit : out, may perhaps be improved by giving it a gentle squeeze 
between the finger and thumb, and then the removal of the stained 
outride petal may make a fine flower of it. An ivory dressing-stick 
will be found useful. It should be the size of your middle finger, 
flat, and rounded at one end. If in any difficulty about obtaining 
it, ask a lady friend to show you the ivories employed in netting, 
and borrow one for practice. By deftly handling this, holding the 
rose at the base between the thumb and two fingers of the left hand, 
you may regulate the petals if they are a little disorderly, gently 
curling them in towards the centre. 
To provide moss may prove a more difficult task than providing 
roses. If it is not green and bright, you will be better off without 
it; but as there is nothing so good as moss, you must be at some 
trouble to secure it if you can. The Eev. S. It. Hole recommends 
preparing a lining of zinc for the boxes, and in this growing the 
dwarf Lycopodium, SelagineUa apoda, to form a rich green bed for 
the roses. But this adds to the weight of the boxes, and is finer in 
theory than practice. The late C. J. Perry, of Castle Bromwich — 
one of the truest florists and heartiest of men who has helped a show 
in modern times — once spoilt the look of a magnificent box of 
twenty-four at the Crystal Palace by bedding them on cut sprays of 
the common lycopodium, Selaginella denticulata, which had a most 
weedy appearance. What, then, you will ask, is a rosarian to do if 
he cannot obtain real moss of the proper fairy-like texture and 
colour P The answer is easy. Let the boxes be nicely painted and 
varnished a full dark green colour, and set up the flowers without 
moss, and every rose will appear to the judicial as well as to the 
public eye iu its proper beauty. 
When you have done all, be patient and hopeful. If you win, 
be not vaiu ; if you lose, be not down-hearted ; and, above all 
things, do not openly or inwardly abuse the judges, for remember 
that they perhaps know more about roses than you do, and after all 
they are but fallible men, and must have a margin for error in com- 
mon with other people. 
March. 
