398 
NEW FLOWERS AND PLANTS. 
of those in pots has been much improved, and 
we do not despair of seeing them generally 
shown, hy-and-by, without all those mechanical 
contrivances, which are a disgrace to British 
Floriculture. 
The meetings of the Royal Society for 
the Encouragement of Floriculture and 
Horticulture have been well attended ; and 
numerous seedlings in fuchsias, verbenas, 
petunias, carnations, picotees, pinks, and dah- 
lias, have been shown. The principal meet- 
ings since our last, have been at Kingsland, 
and the grand quarterly central meeting at 
Watson's hotel. The only flowers that have 
been really distinguished, during the year, 
have been four or five seedling crocuses, 
which are a decided advance on all we had be- 
fore, but for which no certificate was awarded, 
as the raiser showed the inutility of it until he 
could get up a stock ; a seedling dahlia, shown 
by Mr. Robinson, which, although admired, 
and considered quite an acquisition, was not 
officially noticed, because there were not six 
blooms, which is the least number on which 
the judges will adjudicate ; and the seedling 
picotee of Mr. Turner, called Duchess of Suther- 
land, which was awarded what may be consi- 
dered the maiden certificate — the only one 
that, up to that evening, had been awarded, 
although more than three hundred speci- 
mens had been exhibited. It has been 
thought that the judges were too particular, 
but when at one part of the town there are 
men combined for the express purpose of 
deceiving the public, by awarding certifi- 
cates of merit to flowers that do not add one 
single property or novelty to those we pos- 
sess, and are not worth growing, the judges 
of a respectable Society, to which distant 
gentlemen look up with confidence, feel they 
must be very cautious how they give value to 
new productions. To gain one of their first- 
class certificates, a flower must be new in 
colour, and as good in other respects as those 
we have already ; or if it be a colour we 
already possess, it must be a decided advance 
in form and other properties. Let any Fuchsia 
grower, who bought Lord Nelson upon the 
warranty of those certificate manufacturers 
just mentioned, judge for himself what the 
thirty flowers were worth that shared the ho- 
nour with that coarse and worthless Fuchsia. 
Let the gentleman who helped to award 
himself the certificate look at his Ne plus 
ultra, which had an honest and well-earned 
certificate from a more respectable source, 
and ask himself whether he can find a Fuchsia 
better than his Ne plus ultra, or worse than 
his Lord Nelson, in the whole family grown 
and thrown away for the last ten years. It is 
the feature of the Society for the Encourage- 
ment of Floriculture, &c. that the judges are 
elected for the year, and nothing can displace 
them till the end of the term, and as they have 
no interest in the result, their decisions are 
impartial and authoritative. 
NEW FLOWERS AND PLANTS. 
Gaultheria bracteata, G. Don (brac- 
teated Gaultheria). — Ericaceae § Ericeas-An- 
dromedidas. — A low-growing, but very hand- 
some evergreen shrub, attaining a foot or a 
foot and a half or more in height, with round, 
somewhat rigid, and more or less hairy 
branches, clothed with alternate, ovate, or 
cordate-ovate acute leaves, an inch and a half 
long and an inch broad, minutely saw-edged, 
usually glabrous above, and sometimes hairy 
or rusty beneath. The flowers grow in simple 
racemes, which are either axillary or termi- 
nal ; they are attached by short stalks, at the 
base of which are comparatively large ovate 
acute bracteas of the same rosy colour as the 
flowers, which grow in a secund manner. The 
flowers are tubular-ovate, contracted at the 
mouth, close below the short spreading five- 
lobed limb. Native of South America, near 
Quito, in the elevated regions of New Gra- 
nada, and in the Andes of Columbia. Intro- 
duced in 1848. Flowers in the summer. It 
is the Andromeda bracteata (Cavanilles) ; 
Gaultheria, erecta (Ventenat) ; G. odorata, 
cordifolia, et rlgida (Humboldt, Bonpland, 
and Kunth). Culture. — Requires an airy 
greenhouse in winter, and shade in summer ; 
light peat soil ; propagated by layers, or by 
seeds. 
Camellia japonica, var. Rubini (Rubini's 
Japan Rose). — Ternstromiaceaa. — A fine va- 
riety of the Japan Camellia, of the imbricated 
class, remarkable for the uniformly bi-coloured 
markings of its petals. The habit is robust, 
the leaves large, broadly ovate acuminate, and 
shining green. The flowers are four inches 
in diameter, circular, raised in the centre; the 
outer petals broad, and slightly notched, the in- 
ner ones gradually becoming narrower, and at 
length pointed, the innermost not much exceed- 
ing the eighth of an inch in width; the whole of 
the petals are deep rose at the base, becoming 
almost perfectly white at the margins, with a 
prominent band of light rose and white in the 
centre ; the petals lie in such a position that 
usually these bands fall in a line with others, 
giving the flowers a rayed appearance, which, 
with the uniform and unbroken gradations in 
form and size of the petals, constitutes the 
peculiar features of this variety. Raised in 
Italy. Introduced to Belgian gai-dens about 
1 844, by M. A. Verschaffelt, of Ghent. Flowers 
