1871 ] 
THE NEW DAHLIAS OF 1870. 
33 
regularly in every part. When water is so applied that a hollow is formed around 
the stem of a delicate Plant, and a continuous supply is poured in so as to sink 
mostly at that point, the speedy death of the plant will be the result. On the 
other hand, when the water sinks at the sides of the pot, the interior of the ball 
will become so dry as not to be able to sustain such fibrous roots as may be 
formed, and the consequences will be the starvation of the plant. From these 
observations it will be seen, that it is necessary to attend to the surface of the 
compost. Without attention to the foregoing principles in the culture of plants 
in pots, the}' will not long be maintained in a healthy condition; but if they 
are duly attended to, in the case of all plants of the class to which this mode of 
culture applies (of course I do not include orchids, &c.), the plants will be 
uniformly vigorous and healthy, and being repotted as required, may be kept so 
for several years.— Edward Bennett, Enville , Stourbridge. 
THE NEW DAHLIAS OF 1870. 
8 INCE 1840 what a prodigious stride has been made in the improvement 
of the Dahlia, especially in the first fifteen of the thirty years that 
f j? have intervened! Among the finest of the flowers sent out in 1840, 
perhaps the finest, were those floricultural wonders, Cox’s Yellow Defiance, 
Pamplin’s Bloomsbury, and Harrison’s Charles XII. As I write, there are lying 
before me the coloured representations of these flowers as they appeared in the 
“Floricultural Cabinet” for that year, and in which they were described as being 
“ first-rate flowers.” I have no doubt they were considered so then, and I dare say 
their fortunate possessors were proud of them ; but looking back upon them from 
our advanced stand-point, with all the accumulations of past years going into the 
composition of our ideal of comparative perfection, they look like coarse, rough, 
gaping flowers, as perhaps ours may look thirty years hence to a generation of 
unborn florists ! 
I think that from 1845 to 1855 our florists made great advances in the form 
of the individual florets [petals, as they are persistently, but erroneously called] 
and in the fullness of their new flowers. I take these to be the two great character¬ 
istics of the progress made during that time, though others were scarcely less 
strikingly developed. Since then, and up to the present time, an exquisite 
symmetry, combined with novelty in colour, have been the two leading qualities 
the Dahlia has borne. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, we move onward ; there is 
is an advance, and the knowledge of this progress is one of the many gratifications 
derived from the pursuit of floriculture. 
In 1870 seven First-Class Certificates were awarded to Dahlias, viz., four to 
show flowers, and three to fancy varieties. Taken alphabetically, the show flowers 
stand thus :—Annie Hobbs (Hobbs), French white, a finely formed flower of 
medium size and undoubted quality; outline, florets, and centre all good. 
Marchioness of Bath (Wheeler), pale ground, heavily tipped with deep rose ; a 
