522 
CULTURE OF FLOWERS. 
and carrots is losing sight of it with his choice 
flowers and plants. We have even watched 
the geranium in the stock, the ordinary cul- 
tivation manifestly degenerating from year to 
year in the same hands, and the people silly 
enough to call it the degeneracy of the flower 
itself; but looking at the same kinds in other 
hands, where the occasional changes are ob- 
served, they are as much superior as almost 
another variety. We believe it to be quite 
possible to change the very constitution of a 
plant by culture; that is to say, change it for 
the worse. The excessive propagation of a fine 
double flower of the Syngeneceous kind may 
be propagated by rapid growth, so as to make 
it almost single, and we have tried year after 
year to get it back, but without success ; and 
we trace some of the great disappointments in 
flowers to this cause. The effect is very much 
the same. Take a dahlia, for instance; keep it 
growing, and cut off the shoots as fast as the 
heat draws them forth. The early ones may 
be good, but you may keep on taking the shoots 
till they are fairly starved into single ones; 
— it is so many growths in the same spot and 
in the same soil. Many, however, are naturally 
so double that the excess hardly affects them. 
How many are th°re growing dahlias, and 
grumbling at their degeneracy, who never 
bought the sorts but once, and have grown 
them without changing for many years? They 
find some of them less certain than they used 
to be, and some smaller than they used to be, 
and they throw away some that they call worn 
out ; but if they buy the sorts from some 
distant place, and throw their own away, they 
will be gratified at finding such a change 
for the better. Many have thrown away the 
Duchess of Richmond, because it would not 
come full and double as it used to do ; these 
people have only to get it in from some distant 
place, and they will find it as useful and double 
as ever it was. It is the same with many 
others, which have been abandoned altogether 
in some localities, and are doing well in others. 
This it is that gives rise to a difference of opi- 
nion upon the merits of a flower, which one of 
the parties has seen in perfection and the other 
has not. In a garden once rather famed for 
dahlias, we saw many of the old sorts, which 
the party said he kept growing only because 
he was frequently applied to for them ; there we 
saw also Springfield Rival with every flower 
bad ; and all we could learn was, that they had 
not been good for years, but there were people 
who occasionally had it in collections, so they 
always kept it. It would be only multiplying 
cases to go the whole round of the flowers, 
and strange to say there was hardly an in- 
stance in which there was not the same ad- 
mission, namely, that they had grown the 
subjects, and propagated from year to year 
from the same stock. If it be asked why the 
same evil was not apparent in everything, il 
is answered by the very strongest fact in be- 
half of our position. The partial change given 
by potting and repotting, the changes of soil 
in the beds, and the additions of various 
dressings, counteracts in some measure the 
natural decline, which would otherwise be 
rapid : again, among dealers who do much 
business, there are occasional additions from 
distant stocks, which prevents any decline 
from being universal; but the main evil which 
will account for a thousand degeneracies 
exists, and we earnestly recommend every 
amateur who desires to shine in any one 
article, to make exchanges with people who 
are growing as well as tliemselves, and to re- 
member that constantly working from the 
same stock is the readiest way to make it 
grow worse, and eventually to degenerate 
beyond the power of redeeming it. We do not 
mean here to insinuate that all things that go 
off fail in consequence of this oversight, be- 
cause the growers of the auricula, and of 
carnations, and picotees, and even polyan- 
thuses may destroy a whole, collection by damp 
alone, and carelessness may in many different 
ways bring a good deal of mischief; but we do 
say, that a vast deal more of the mischief 
than any body can conceive, arises entirely 
from constantly propagating and growing from 
the same stock year after year. We know there 
are some who will tell us that they have done 
so for years, and yet their plants do well asd 
give satisfaction. We could ourselves point 
to Dickson's auriculas, thousands of which, in 
extreme rude health and strength, would ap- 
pear at first sight to belie the facts we have 
advanced; but there are two essential things 
to consider; he is often receiving stock from 
the country, and, however well the general 
stock may look, we have seen auriculas, thirty 
years ago, grown stronger; and the same treat- 
ment of plants from the country would produce 
even better than he could possibly grow his 
own ; then again, as to the plants doing well 
with everybody who buys them of Dickson, 
that does not alter our position at all, because 
we say his would do better anywhere than 
with himself, if carefully grown, and other 
people's, not one jot better, would grow more 
robust with him. Still we must not lose sight 
of the possibility, that a stock may be hurt so 
much as to almost spoil a variety for a con- 
siderable time, if not altogether; and again, 
potted plants are less liable to the worst mis- 
chief than plants grown out of doors in the 
ordinary soil, because, as we have before ob- 
served, the changes of soil counteract the 
decline sufficiently to make it less rapid. We 
do not remember to have seen or read any- 
thing upon this subject, and the propriety of 
