JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
226 
[ March 24, 1881. 
grown of any. It is very free-flowering, but scarcely so sweetly 
scented as the foregoing ; colour pale flesh. Souvenir de Mal- 
maison is also grown on account of the great size of the blooms 
it produces, and one or two other varieties are on trial. No old 
plants are retained, the cuttings for next season’s batch now being 
propagated. These when rooted are gradually hardened-off, potted 
into 3-inch pots, placed in a cold frame, and in May or early in 
June are shifted into 10-inch pots, the size in which they flower, 
and are then placed outside. A gritty loamy soil is used, fine for 
the cuttings, and later on in a coarse state. They are never pinched 
back, and the central and principal side shoots are supported with 
stakes. They flower during the whole winter most freely in the 
temperature of an intermediate house, and should not be crowded. 
Mr. Taylor’s method of striking Carnations, Roses, Gardenias, 
Verbenas, Iresines, and many other kinds is worthy of notice, as 
being altogether different from that usually practised. Boxes about 
24 inches long, 15 inches wide, and 5 inches and in some instances 
7 inches deep, are employed. These are lightly drained, and about 
2 inches of fine soil is used with a thin layer of sand on the sur¬ 
face. The cuttings are dibbled in thinly, watered, and closely 
covered with glass in three divisions. Strips of paper are pasted 
over the unions of the glass, and also round the edges of the 
glasses and boxes. The boxes are then placed over a gentle 
bottom heat, or along the paths near to the hot-water pipes of a 
forcing house, and the cuttings shaded when necessary with sheets 
of paper. The orthodox method with propagating frames and 
boxes is to take off the glasses and dry them every morning, but 
in Mr. Taylor’s case the cuttings are hermetically sealed down, 
and are not broken open till it is seen they are rooted, when the 
glasses are removed and the cuttings gradually hardened, other 
boxes of cuttings taking their places. The plan is very rapid in 
effect, as the cuttings never flag from the time of insertion, and 
is particularly suited to the clean houses and plants. The cuttings 
do not touch the glasses, and are not liable to damp off.— Visitor. 
LECTURE ON THE TULIP. 
On Tuesday, March 22nd, Mr. Shirley Hibberd gave a lecture on the 
Tulip in the conservatory of the Royal Horticultural Society. The 
lecture, which we publish in a slightly abridged form, was illustrated 
by many of the flowers that have acquired historical importance. 
He said : The Tulip being the oldest and most important of the 
flowers that obtain the attention of florists, it may be anticipated that 
its history is not lacking in materials for our entertainment, but there 
are some points in that history that we may perhaps with advantage 
consider. 
In searching through the old books we fail to find reason for class¬ 
ing the Tulip with the flowers of antiquity. Although ancient as a 
florists’ flower, it is not ancient in any other sense. It must have 
been known to the Greek botanists, but they give us no certain clue 
to it in their writings, and we are left in doubt as to their recognition 
of it as di-tinct from the Lilies and the Narcissi. Certain old English 
writers find in the Tulip the Satyrium of Dioscorides. However, we 
must dismiss from our minds all our cherished notions of the possible 
importance of the Tulip as a garden flower antecedent to its discovery 
by Conrad Gesner in 1559, and then we begin the history of the 
flower with the history of a man to enhance the interest. Gesner of 
Zurich, born in 1516, was not only the first to make known the 
splendours of the Tulip, but he was also the first upon record who 
formed a museum of natural history, and the first botanist who dis¬ 
tinguished the generic characters of plants, and thus prepared the 
way for grouping species in accordance with their more striking 
affinities. In this man we have a fine example of the glory that 
accumulates, slowly perhaps but surely, around the name of one who 
not only loves but labours in his vocation, and has for the chief hope 
of his life the completion of the tasks he has assigned himself. The 
catalogue of Gesner’s books will surprise anyone familiar with the 
fewness of the facilities for bookmaking in his day—a day so diffe¬ 
rent to our day, when books, and especially horticultural books, are 
made by the simple process of copying, and rendered obnoxious and 
harmful by the blunders of the copyists. Gesner records that he first 
saw the Tulip in the beginning of April, 1559, at Augsburg, in the 
garden of Councillor John Henry Herwart. In 1611 they first 
appeared in Provence in France, in the garden of the celebrated 
Peiresc. The Dutch obtained their first supply from Constantinople. 
The first that were planted in England came, according to Hakluyt, 
from Vienna, being obtained thence by Carolus Clusius. In some of 
the books Clusius is put before Gesner as the discoverer of the Tulip, 
but Beckmann very properly describes Clusius as having only col¬ 
lected and described the then-known species. Gesner travelled to 
obtain plants for his own botanic garden at Basil, and also subjects 
for the painters and engravers he maintained at his own expense ; 
and it appears to me a peculiar and proper event that such a man 
should secure for the delight of northern Europe, and the florists of 
Holland and England, the flower which until then had been monopo¬ 
lised by the gardens of Constantinople. 
It is a happy circumstance that the Tulip conforms to the law of 
Nature, for, like the sun and civilisation, it is first seen in the east, 
and the west learns of it by a second edition. The Tulip must have 
been for centuries cultivated in the east somewhere or other, because, 
almost coeval with the first knowledge of it as a plant in western 
Europe, we find it represented by many varieties. 
Turning to the literary representatives of the gardens of northern 
Europe, I find the first proper reference to the Tulip to be in the 
“ Historie of Plantes ” of the famous Rembert Dodoens, published 
in 1578. At page 213 of the large edition, and page 240 of the small 
edition which has no figures, we find the Tulip described as the 
Tulpia or Lilionai'cissus, and thus we are compelled to confront the 
problem comprised in its name. What is to be understood by the 
term Tulip, or Tulipan, or Tulpia ? In the case of the Hyacinth, 
Narcissus, and many other plants, a fiction of Ovid or any other poet 
delivers us from a difficulty, and enables us to give a reason, however 
ridiculous, for the name of the plant; but now, in the etymology of 
the Tulip, we seem to be completely undone. In Richardson’s 
Dictionary occurs the definition “ Tulipan, the Dalmatian Cap ; ” and 
Cotgrave is cited to justify the term “tulipist” as applied to lovers 
of Tulips, which we should allow in the present day without a scruple 
on the same ground that we allow “ rosarian ” as applied to a lover of 
Roses, and shall in due time, perhaps, have to allow for “ solanumist,” 
as applicable to a man who is mad about Potatoes. It is as clear 
as can be desired that Tulipan is the equivalent of turban, and that 
this flower takes its name from its resemblance to the head-dress 
of the east. Herein we have hints innumerable for the students of 
costume, and especially for those who design the dresses for the 
pantomimes of the present and near future. The Tulip is a turban, 
and there is an end of that part of the subject. 
In Dodoens there are two classes of Tulips described, which are 
distinguished as large and small, and I think it will puzzle the 
botanists to distinguish them clearly according to modern nomen¬ 
clature. It is sufficient to say that they are described as of many 
colours, and as differing in size only. A rude guess would make 
them representatives of our present early and late sections ; the tall 
sort being Tulipa Gesneriana, the reputed parent of the late Tulips, 
the other, T. oculus-solis, the reputed parent of the early Tulips. 
But rude guesses are not to be desired, and we may have in the two 
sections recognised in 1578 the early Tulips as the largest, and the 
Van Thol. or Tulipa suaveolens, as the smaller kind. When we come 
to Gerarde, 1597, we feel that we are on solid ground. He calls it 
the “ Tulipa, or the Dalmatian Cap,” and describes it as “ a strange 
and forraine flower, one of the number of the bulbed flowers, whereof 
there be sundrie sorts, some greater, some lesser, with which all 
studious and painefull herbarists desire to be better acquainted, 
bicause of that excellent diuersitie of most braue flowers which it 
beareth.” Gerarde describes fourteen sorts under a general classifi¬ 
cation of Prsecox, Serotina, and Media, the “ timely ” (or early), the 
“ later,” and “flowering between both the others.” The solid ground 
of Gerarde acquires a vast extent in Parkinson, 1629, who enumerates 
140 kinds, his classification being the same as that of his great prede¬ 
cessor, comprising early flowering, mean flowering, and late flowering. 
Parkinson gives us thirty figures of varieties, in some of which we 
see the “flame” and the “feather” in a fair slate of development, 
affording delightful promise of the glories that were soon to be 
revealed and that were to turn the brains of the Dutchmen, and, by 
the follies of the great Tulip bubble or Tulip mania, prove their con¬ 
sanguinity with the English, who can enjoy a bubble as well as any 
people in the world. The fact is when John Parkinson was engaged 
in preparing these figures the bubble was being blown, and it was 
floating high in the sickly atmosphere of a fool’s paradise in the year 
1634, and did not burst until 1637. The story of this great folly, as 
told in Beckman’s “ History of Inventions,” is so well known that it 
would be waste of time for me to treat of it in detail ; but I will 
quote a few particulars from Munting’s extracts from the account 
books of the traders, for the puiqiose of introducing some other 
matters that I think will perhaps surprise as well as interest our 
friends the florists. For one root of a variety called the Viceroy the 
following articles were offered—namely, 2 lasts of wheat, 4 lasts of 
rye, four fat oxen, three fat swine, twelve fat sheep, 2 hogsheads of 
wine, 4 tons of beer, 2 tons of butter, 1000 lbs. of cheese, a bed, a suit 
of clothes, and a silver beaker, the aggregate value of these articles 
being 2500 florins. In 1636 Henry Munting sold to a merchant at 
Alkmaar a Tulip root for 7000 florins, but before it could be delivered 
the price had fallen, and by agreement the merchant paid 10 per 
cent., so that Munting pocketed 700 florins for nothing; but it is 
recorded he would rather have delivered the root for the 7000 1 One 
man made by this trade a little fortune of 60,000 florins in the course 
of four months ; so we may conclude that the Dutch people were as 
much excited about Tulip roots in 1634 as the English people were 
about railway scrip in 1845. But I quit this part of the subject by 
saying that the florists were in no way, or only in a shadowy way, 
mixed up with this folly ; the speculators were noblemen, farmers, 
pedlars, sailors, and chimney sweeps. They knew nothing and cared 
nothing for Tulips, and they very rarely saw the bulbs they traded 
in, and probably many were bought and sold that never existed, the 
mere names serving as materials for speculation. 
It is a very interesting question, however, as to what particular 
class of Tulips gave rise to the morbid excitement, and fed it with 
such few floral facts as were absolutely needful. A Tulip-grower of 
the present day would, a priori , declare that the late Tulips alone, 
with their noble forms and fine feathers, would suffice to afford the 
