1877. ] 
THE AUEIOULA.-CHAPTER XIII. 
121 
CAMELLIA MADAME CACHET. 
WITH AN ILLUSTRATION. 
‘'E liave to tliank the Messrs. Veitch and Sons, of Chelsea, for the oppor¬ 
tunity of figuring this fine variety of Camellia, which is decidedly one 
of the very best of the double white varieties with pale striped flowers. 
It is of Continental origin, and does not appear as yet to be very widely 
known. It, how^ever, is deserving of the most extended cultivation, and so highly 
do the Messrs. Veitch think of it, that they have planted it out as one of the 
gems admitted to a permanent position in their Camellia-house, an honour which 
is accorded only to varieties of the highest merit. 
It is a plant of vigorous growth, and is provided with that first consideration 
in selecting a good Camellia—broad healthy-looking foliage, of a fine deep green 
colour. The flowers are of the full middle-size, the petals neatly and regularly 
imbricated, broad, smooth, and clear in colour, of a pure white, marked with 
distinct but narrowish stripes of pale carmine-red. It is a variety which may be 
safely adopted for general cultivation.—T. Moore. 
Chapter XIII.- 
THE AUEIOULA. 
-The Bloom.—The Crystal Palace Show.—Notes on 
Novelties. 
'HE Auricula has been brought forward to plead more eloquently for itself 
than could any written advocacy of admiration or description. A warm 
and brilliant reception awaited it in London, and it came from far and 
near, from town and country, from lowly frame and cosy house. It came 
in its primrose modesty, from the cool shade of its violet-like seclusion, to be a 
noted visitor in the gay London floral season, a fresh and artless pretty country 
cousin, among all the usual spring show flowers that are far too seasoned now to 
bend their heads and blush at praise. 
There was something very touching in the presence of the Auricula at the 
Crystal Palace Show. It was there as a once neglected flower—to show what a 
winsome favourite had been forsaken and forgotten. So long has it been overlooked, 
that to nearly every one who sees it now, its delicate and wondrous beauties are 
a strange new thing. It has been reduced to such a paucity of friends, that their 
names have been painfully prominent by their fewness ; and now he who possesses 
Auriculas is accounted in floricultural circles as one endowed with rare gifts and 
virtues! For the one and very natural revenge which this slighted flower has 
taken has been to make itself scarce ; and this retaliation must be all the more 
acutely felt, because it is not in the power of the plant to rapidly increase by off¬ 
sets, nor indeed by seeds, while no seedling is ever an exact reproduction of the 
parent variety. Alpines,” however, are fairly prolific in both ways ; it is the 
high-bred edged flowers that are so shy. 
The Crystal Palace Show had excited great hopes and interest, and there the 
3ed series.—X. M 
1 
