180 
ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY. 
from the edge to the body of the petal, without 
reaching far. In form, texture, and thickness, 
they should be alike ; it is the marking which 
• is so different, and essentially different, as to 
make the distinction between them. Of the 
many writers on these flowers, none have been 
able to decide upon the cause of one particular 
failing. When all that can be done has been 
done, and without our being able to arrive at 
any good reason^ for it, some flowers will lose 
their beautiful stripes and edges, and become 
flushed with colour all over, in the same way 
that a Tulip will go back to a breeder or self- 
colour, after blooming for years in the finest 
possible character ; but there is this essential 
difference in the flowers, — the Tulip has first to 
break into stripes after coming a self-colour, 
and perhaps blooming so for years, whereas 
the Carnation begins flowering even the first 
year from the seed, in its beautiful variegated 
colours, and one is not prepared for the change 
to a worthless self-coloured bloom. The manner 
of its coming is as extraordinary as it is unac- 
countable. Plants reared from the same stool 
will come, some fine, some run and spoiled, 
although all have been treated alike, in every 
possible way. Nay, this is not all, for flowers 
on the same plant will come, one run and one 
fine ; and, worse or more puzzling than this, 
a flower itself will be half run and half fine. 
This shuts out at once all the groundless 
notions that have been formed of its being 
caused by different treatment. By some it 
has been considered, that the more they are 
excited by strong manures the more apt they 
are to partially or wholly rim ; and, one of 
the most likely means of profitable investiga- 
tion of the subject will be found in submitting 
the flowers, or rather the petals of flowers, in 
their different states, to a powerful microscope. 
Our readers do not want to be told that the 
petals of flowers are composed of atoms like 
so many bladders of liquid. Now, if these 
contain the colouring matter, and any par- 
ticular rupture of these globules disperse it, 
we can easily account for the partial running 
of a single flower, or the running of all the 
flowers upon a plant, because the excited 
growth that would burst the globules of which 
the flowers are formed, would, if the colouring 
matter be there, disseminate that which\>rigi- 
nally formed, or would form, the dense or 
brilliant concentrated marks, over the whole 
texture, that is, among all the colourless 
globules of which the white parts seem com- 
posed, and so make a fainter hue over the 
whole mass ; so also would the rupture of a 
few, in one part of the flower, spoil a portion 
or the whole of the petal in which the rupture 
took place ; and in every stage of foulness, 
from very partial to very general, the effect is 
precisely that which would be caused by the 
bursting of the globules of colour in the 
coloured parts, and its running all among the 
neighbouring, if not the whole, of the colour- 
less atoms belonging to the part which would 
have been white. If this theory be admitted, 
there is no longer a mystery in the running 
of Carnations ; and it is easy to suppose 
that the globules of which the coloured part 
of a flower is composed, may be too weak for 
a strong growth, and that they, like the blood- 
vessels in the human frame, would give way 
under particular excitement. The partial 
rupture of a flower, as, for instance, a single 
petal, is no more strange than the rupture of 
a single vessel in the lungs or the brain, and 
may be caused by too much excitement at that 
part, or by too little resisting strength. It is, 
in fact, no more than the bursting of a goose- 
berry or the cracking of a plum. It is only 
necessary for our readers, to submit the petals 
of a flower to the magnifying power that will 
exhibit its thousand globules of which it is 
composed as perfect as the roe of a herring, 
or the pulp of an orange, and they will no 
longer consider it wonderful that a Carnation 
runs in colour. All florists seem to fancy that 
the running of flowers is a consequence of 
growing them too rank, or, in other words, of 
exciting them too much, — a conclusion not at 
all unnatural; but it may be also the con- 
sequence of a predisposition to a peculiar 
weakness in the flower itself, or in the portions 
which form the predominating colours ; and 
this is the more likely, because we find parti- 
cular varieties much more liable than others. 
The study of the florist, therefore, should be 
to adopt with such varieties, a steady culture, 
avoiding as much as possible exciting com- 
post, and thus, as far as possible, prevent un- 
necessary growth, which we do know is often 
fatal to highly coloured flowers. "We wish 
more attention were paid by florists to this sub- 
ject ; it is impossible to conceive one more 
interesting, and surely there is not one which 
has given rise to such senseless speculations. 
ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY.* 
If anything can make converts to the neces- 
sity and the advantage of scientific pursuits, 
the labours of Mr. Carpenter must have this 
tendency. Inquiries that have been deemed 
presumptuous, an4 pronounced irreligious, 
from the very manner in which philosophers 
have conducted them, are in this gentleman's 
admirable treatises rendered tributary to the 
worship of the Creator, through his wondrous 
* " Animal Physiology ; a comprehensive Sketch of 
the Principal Forms of Animal Structure." By W. B. 
Carpenter, M.D.,F.R.S., author of " General and Com- 
parative Physiology," Lecturer on Natural History and 
Comparative Anatomy at St. Thomas's Hospital. Lon- 
don ; Wm. S. Orrand Co. Paternoster-row. 1844. 
