72 
FLORICULTURE OF THE MONTH. 
eeedling dahlias were exhibited, of which not 
twenty could have been exhibited under the 
tried and effective test which we established 
years ago, when everybody proving a new 
variety was obliged to exhibit six blooms. By 
allowing only three to be shown, scores of un- 
certain flowers that w r ill perhaps scarcely ever 
produce a perfect specimen, were exhibited. 
Men never, if they can help it, try a flower 
likely to be a favourite with less than twenty 
or thirty plants, and if that number, carefully 
nursed as they always are, will not produce 
six perfect blooms on a given day, it cannot 
be worth the room it takes in a garden, to say 
nothing of the price paid for it. The eifect 
was that instead of twenty or thirty being 
produced that would perhaps be certain, what- 
ever their quality might be, there were a hun- 
dred, or perhaps a good many more, from which 
three could be cut out of the thirty plants, 
but which would not have been shown had 
six as heretofore been required. The altera- 
tion then produced a greater number of varie- 
ties, but not the slightest confidence can be 
placed in the flowers, nor the awards made 
upon them. The result has been unquestion- 
able : the sale will be confined to the few 
individuals who would rather buy a dozen bad 
ones than miss a good one, instead of being 
distributed among the many who buy every 
thing in which they have confidence. We are 
therefore very far from thinking the result of 
the dahlia show of the last year glorious, nor 
can we view it in any light, but that of a sad 
retrograde movement, and unless we re-estab- 
lish the dahlia show upon its old footing, the 
trade and the flower will decline as rapidly as 
ever it advanced. However, the dealers have 
seen the evil, and everybody who buys all 
that have been advertised as " first-rate varie- 
ties," " show flowers," and " splendid forms," 
will find that nine out of ten will j>rove use- 
less, enough to damp the ardour and excite 
the disgust of the best disposed amateurs. In 
the sorts we have described, we are at a loss 
ourselves for that evidence which helps our 
judgment as to the certainty of a variety, 
and had we not had other opportunities of 
seeing a few of them sent to us individually, 
we should have hesitated to recommend any 
from what we saw at the exhibition. How- 
ever, those who did not send us any pay the 
penalty in a diminished sale, for assuredly 
those who trust to us are by no means few. 
A writer has recently started a new and 
silly crotchet about the properties of the pink, 
and affirms that the lacing ought to be on the 
extreme edge, and that there should be no 
white margin beyond it, and he asks why 
there should be a margin of white to a pink 
any more than to a picotee or a tulip. Dr. 
Horner, whom we do not always agree with, 
has given the writer a good set down, and 
answers his question by saying, simply because 
a pink is not a picotee nor yet a tulip ; and 
confirms the properties as we have laid them 
down with a little more detail than we give, 
for we have only given fundamental princi- 
ples, and so that these are complied with, we 
care not. The pink which is mentioned by 
Dr. Horner as a good specimen and approach- 
ing the standard, is the variety called X X. 
This pink we noticed as long ago as July 
twelvemonth, as a very fine rose-leaved 
flower, when there was but a single bloom 
exhibited, and that one only half open. We 
regard the white margin outside a pink as 
Dr. Horner does — as a leading feature, a 
leading property, and it is strange that there 
should be so much struggling among people 
of little or no weight to disturb those princi- 
ples upon which all good florists are agreed ; 
but we are vexed with journalists who give 
currency to articles tending to disturb those 
points on which, after much discussion, the 
best florists have met each other and agreed. 
We thank Dr. Horner for his defence of the 
properties of the pink. 
One of the greatest enthusiasts of the pre- 
sent day in the tulip fancy, proposes to re- 
duce his superb collection to a single bulb of 
each of the choice sorts, and sells oiF on bloom 
as near the twentieth of May as the state of 
the bloom will admit. Among the same 
things we esteem a few of Franklin's varieties 
highly ; we once saw all his flowers in a bed 
which contained none but those of his own 
raising. Of the hundreds he had produced 
during a long floricultural life, there were ten 
or a dozen of a superior and novel character. 
At that period he required such an extrava- 
gant price, that we, with all our zeal, and no 
want of money, abstained from purchasing. 
The collection we speak of contains all his 
clean and best flowers purchased at his sale, 
and cultivated still with great care ; but an 
advertisement will give more information than 
we can give here. Every tulip-grower knows 
the name of Mansfield from his spirited pur- 
chases at good sales, but like many others 
whose gardens are in the vicinity of London, 
he is very likely to get notice to quit to make 
way for bricks and mortar, and he reduces his 
collection to one of a sort in anticipation of 
removal. Right sorry are we that so many 
good metropolitan growers have year after 
year been driven as it were out of the fancy 
by the deprivation of their gardens, but we 
fear there will soon be scarcely a vestige left 
of gardening in the metropolis. Certain it is 
that the ground on which some of our finest 
flowers in early days were raised, is now 
covered with houses ; even the site of the 
Walworth nursery is a square of houses. 
