THE JOY OF A GARDEN, 
75 
family which may present desirable qualities j the progeny 
will be one step in advance, and by steady repetition of 
the process, the plant will at last rise to the dignity of a 
florist's flower, its varieties will be counted by thousands, 
and glad eyes will gaze upon myriads of gorgeous blooms 
set out on the exhibition stage, little dreaming that the 
parent of all these variously coloured and diverse varieties 
was but a poor, slender, unnoticeable thing, which a 
passer-by would have spurned with his foot as “ a weed" 
worthless of attention. What would the first dahlia, or 
the first half-dozen pelargoniums, or the first chrysan¬ 
themum now appear, if placed beside a few of the best of 
their progeny raised of late years ? And who, except for 
the proveable and admitted nature of the fact, would 
believe that the thousands of different varieties, glowing 
in all the hues of the rainbow, and conforming to severe 
rules as to forms and properties, are the descendants of 
such unattractive tilings as were, for the most part, the 
parents of what are known as florists' flowers ? Nor can 
one fail to feel astonishment at the patience which has 
been shown in attaining such results. It may take twenty 
years to convert a “ self," or one-coloured tulip, into a 
“ feathered " flower, and it is seldom that they “ break " 
in less than seven; yet look at the collection of such a man 
as the late John Lawrence, or go over the ranunculuses of 
Tyso,or the chrysanthemums of Salter, or the pelargoniums 
of Turner and Henderson, and, remembering the original 
materials, it will be almost hard to believe that human 
agency alone has brought such results about. 
It might seem absurd to drop down from the consi¬ 
deration of these high departments of the art to the 
