98 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[MAT, 
fish-nets as above described, they form a beautiful thin screen of foliage and 
flowers, and do not (like larger-leaved climbers) intercept much light, so as to be 
detrimental to other plants growing below them ; and when their beauty is past 
for the season, their stems can be severed at the collar, and the netting, withered 
leaves, and flowers removed altogether. Can anybody give me any information 
of a hybrid said to have been raised between a form of T. majus named 
Napoleon ///., and the yellow-flowered T. peregrinum. It is flgured in Mr, 
Cannell’s Floral Guide as T. canariense improved. —^F. W. Buebidge. 
CAKNATIONS AND PICOTEES. 
Chapter V.— Dressing the Flowers.—^Work for May. 
It may be safely asserted of the ardent florist, that he is a person of a high 
order of sensibility, and it is a natural consequence that where such sensibility 
is not accompanied and controlled by an equally keen power of observation 
widely extended, or by an unusually solid judgment, such a faculty will 
lead to extremes, and frequently into mistakes. 
On few subjects in connection with the art and practice of the florist have 
greater mistakes, or more unfounded inferences and imputations, been made than 
on the practice of “ dressing flowers.” In itself, not only innocent, but praise¬ 
worthy—for it stands on the same ground, and is sustained by the same principle 
which justifles, nay, commands, the multifarious work of the cultivator, and like 
every other operation, is a means to an end, the end being the development of 
greater beauty, and, therefore, of increased enjoyment—it has, nevertheless, been 
denounced as “ pernicious,” “ reprehensible,” and “ dishonest,” and a practice 
which sets up a “ deceptive difference between the flower as grown, and the flower 
as shown.” It is needful, however, to remark of these very grave imputations, 
that they have always proceeded from persons either entirely unacquainted with 
the flower and the practice, or most imperfectly informed, and who have, there¬ 
fore, always started from premises without foundation in fact, or from facts so 
misconceived and misconstrued as to lead to inevitable error. 
It is a noticeable fact in connection with the works of creation that whatever 
subjects in the several families are most capable of development, are in the same 
degree susceptible to the influence of art. Thus man in his highest form of civi¬ 
lisation is so far removed from the savage as, to the uninstructed observer, to 
seem a different species. Yet there are the same physical structure, and the same 
salient features in each. Both possess a natural covering to the head, which is 
beautiful or repulsive as it is subject to the influence of intelligent attention or 
left in neglect. In fine, the sole difference between the lowest form of savage 
man, and the highest type of civilised life, may be summed up in the two words, 
“ intellectual improvement.” 
In the world of flowers, the higher order of the Dianthus family—the Car¬ 
nation, Picotee, and Pink (I treat here only of the two former), starting from 
a level in no way elevated above any of their compeers, have exhibited a power 
t 
