282 
THE FLORIST. 
excellence to the’ Carnation. Ladies generally prefer the Picotee. But 
there are not a few humourists—and I am not ashamed to confess 
myself one of them—who, after all, hold to the Pink as their favourite. 
It is well that in matters of taste these differences exist (for in what 
constitutes perfection in its kind no such differences are found among 
connoisseurs} ; else the attention of those to whom all improvements 
are due—the enthusiasts—would be concentrated on a few of the orna¬ 
ments of our gardens, and the rest would remain in their primitive 
barbarisms. If it had not been for the quiet but assiduous labours of 
the Manns and the Youngs of former days (and we have ourselves 
in those days spent no inconsiderable amount of patient manipulation 
of anther find pistil with the hybridiser’s brush, and have been rewarded 
with a silver spoon for our pains—why a spoon, Mr. Editor?), and for 
the Macleans of the present day, where would the modern breed of 
■ Pinks have appeared in the race ? Fancy the scorn with which a stand 
of Carnations of 1857 would look on a stand of Pinks of 1827- What 
would a Puxley’s Defiance, for instance, with her spreading crinoline 
pettic—petals, I mean; her broad and brilliant scarlet stripes without a 
speck or a spot on her white satin ground, say to a stand of Pinks with 
John Willmer and Dry’s Earl pf Uxbridge in the back row, and 
Barrett’s Conqueror and a broken-laced Clarke’s Adonis in the front ? 
“ You, relations of mine I Bah! hand me a Clove, or I shall faint.” 
Yet Clarke’s Adonis was not excelled by the modern Adonis which 
resembles it. But it was a mule ; and after several years’ trial I could 
never get a pod of seed from it, nor did its pollen produce any resem¬ 
blance to itself, the male parent, in any of its progeny I could so rear 
from it. I believe it is now extinct; but it had the largest and most 
perfectly formed guard petals and the largest grass of any Pink I ever 
knew, and the most exquisite colour. But it was extremely difficult to 
strike, had not petals enough, and rarely if ever laced them perfectly ; 
and as it was of no use as a parent my regrets for it are not vivid. 
When I went out, as a cultivator of Pinks, in 1835, Mr. Mann’s 
flowers were showing the greatest advance in properties. It was a 
seedling from his Bishop Sumner crossed with Clarke’s Adonis that 
won the spoon above mentioned. After that time I heard or saw little 
of Pinks till five years ago ; and I confess to a little ill-natured satis¬ 
faction, when I saw in your pages some time back, that other Pink 
fanciers had been as idle as myself, and, in fact, that for several years 
the improvement of Pinks had not been very perceptible. This 
reproach is now fast disappearing, as your illustration for this month 
shows. And it is a reproach and a shame. There is no reason for 
the hibernation of Pinks—for their secreting themselves for a period 
from public regard—any more than there is for Carnations and 
Picotees to be neglected. 
For in truth they are botanically the same, notwithstanding the 
great differences of habit, time of flowering, constitution, and colouring, 
which exist between them and the Carnation, and the fixity of these 
differences in the two races. The Pink comes in first; a month 
earlier ; the whole plant and each of its parts, except the flower, are 
less than half the size ; colours that are common in the Carnation are 
