AUGUST. 
233 
years ago. Campbell’s Pizarro is an advance, having the stiff petal and 
brown colour of Spalding’s Mary Gray, with the advantage of a per¬ 
fectly flat and circular pip, and exact proportion in the parts; and 
therefore it may be pronounced the nearest approach yet made towards 
a faultless flower. Its drawback is that it is sombre instead of bright; 
its colour is not, like that of Maria, one that would insist on pleasing in 
spite of many faults. Next to Pizarro I should place Mrs. Sturrock, 
notwithstanding its flimsy petal and undecided colour. And then— 
perhaps—Othello. After these would come Nonsuch, Blackbird, North 
Star, Vulcan. Then Bessie Bell, the Metropolitans, Meteor Flag, 
Key’s Apollo, and many others. It will be observed I have not 
inserted in this list Lord Clyde, which is not because I rank it with the 
“many others,” but the contrary ; because I cannot yet satisfy myself 
where to place it; probably among the first three ; but I must grow it 
another year before I can tell its real value. 
And now to conclude. The properties of an Auricula blossom being 
supposed to consist in form, colour, and substance; the substance being 
as leathery as may be without clumsiness ; the general form circular 
and flat; and the colour, whatever it is, bright and pleasing ; the lobes 
six in number (and therefore broad) and elliptical; then the form of 
its component parts comes into review, and here it is that the Self 
differs from the edged classes. In the latter a line drawn through the 
centre should leave four breadths on each side of it nearly equal, for the 
eye, the paste, the colour, and the edge. But in the self the two 
exterior circles are united into one, and therefore the paste should at 
any rate never fall short of its due proportion, but rather should occupy 
a little broader space than in an edged flower. Nor should it ever be 
angular ; the smallest inequality catching the eye so much more 
readily against the broad unbroken contrast of self-colour. Now it 
happens that both these particulars are just those in which most of our 
present seifs most offend. Very few have their proper breadth of 
paste, or have it circular. Pizarro has both, and therein consists its 
advance upon its predecessors. 
George Jeans. 
VISITS BY AN “OUTRIDE.” 
I STILL like to keep to my old description, the same that I started life 
on the road with, now nearly thirty years back—although the term 
“ Commercial ” is now the modern synonyme for it, as well as for 
“ Bagman,” as in days yet older we used to be designated. 
Well, then, having an afternoon on hand in Bath, I brushed up, 
after luncheon at “ Amery’s,” and passing across the market, to make 
inquiries as to the Potato crop, found myself at the top of Pulteney- 
street, one of the grandest streets in Britain, with what used to be the 
Pulteney Hotel at the lower end—a noble pile, and standing at right 
angles with the street forms apparently an imposing termination, for the 
roadway branches off to the right and left, leaving the hotel clear. 
When the present Emperor of the French had slipped his confinement 
