1877. ] 
THE AURICULA.—CHAPTER XIII. 
123 
can get notliing better in its way, then we shall begin to get something different. 
We know how, in the kaleidoscope, the introduction of one little bit of broken 
glass of a new colour will yield quite another set of geometric patterns. So, 
also, in the Auricula there is a resource of colour-power which has not been 
turned to account as yet. In the green, grey, and white-edged classes we have 
abundance of black body-coloured kinds, so much so, that one large grower said 
there were plenty of them, and he would not look at any more black-ground 
greys. 
But Nature has in store for the Edged Auricula delicious touch and gleam of 
other colours,—bright violet-blue and ruddy crimson. Here are dashes of rare 
beauty for the florist’s kaleidoscope of Auricula patterns. Let him work for the 
snowy edge of Smiling Beauty round a rich blue-velvet ground, and for the grass- 
green edge of Colonel Taylor as a border for a ring of ruby. Then, with the 
golden tube and white paste as the inner zones to these, can we not imagine the 
Auriculas of the future ? The long and firm attachment in the North to black 
body-colours has not been without its strong foundation in the other superior 
qualities hitherto co-existent in a black-ground flower. No other colour has lived 
so true upon the pip as the real jet-black of a sort like Lancashire Hero. Such a 
flower dies well”—f.e., nothing gives way first upon it—the edge does not turn 
sere, nor the body-colour change, nor the paste wax thin, nor the tube grow pale 
—all last equally until either the throat of the flower fairly withers under it, or 
the whole pip is cast aside, unworn out, by the swelling seed-vessel. A good 
Auricula should seem constructed on the principle of the “ wonderful one-hoss 
shay ” in the Transatlantic poem, wherein a certain Deacon, a mechanical genius, 
builds a “ kerridge ” in such a logical way that it ran one hundred years to a 
day,” when on the morn of its hundredth year,— 
“ There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay 
A general flavour of mild decay, 
But nothing local, as one may say ; 
There could not be, for the Deacon’s art 
Had made it so like in every part. 
That there was not a chance for one to start; 
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, 
And the floor was just as strong as the sills, 
And the panels just as strong as the floor, 
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more ; • 
And the back cross-bar as strong as the fore, 
" And spring, and axle, and nut, encore; 
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt, 
In another hour ’twill be worn out.” 
The break-up, for it cannot be called a break-down, is then graphically 
described ; it occurred— 
“ All at once, and nothing first. 
Just as bubbles do, when they burst I” 
Other body-colours than black have heretofore proved treacherous. Eich plum- 
reds and violet-blues have become shaded as they age. This is a serious fault in 
either edged or self Auiiculas, and ought to be the true meaning of the term 
M 2 
