Plate 138. 
PICOTEE, JESSIE, AND CARNATION, SAMUEL 
MORETGN. 
The death or retirement of several of our most eminent 
raisers have made the new varieties of these very beautiful 
Towers much more rare than they used to be when Messrs. 
Puxley, May, Dodwell, and others were following their fa¬ 
vourite pursuit with so much ardour. It is now some years 
since Mr. Turner has been able to announce any new varieties 
of Carnations; and Picotees have been also few. Those which 
we now figure are, we are inclined to believe, useful additions 
to the classes to which they belong, and were exhibited by Mr. 
Turner, of Slough. 
There can be no question but that the growth of these 
flowers has very considerably diminished in the metropolitan 
district for some time past, a fact which we believe may be 
taken, not as an evidence of any growing unpopularity, but of 
the value of that healthy stimulus which public exhibitions 
give to the growth of flowers; as a rule, they come into flower 
after the great shows are over, and even at them, when they 
are in bloom, but little encouragement is given to exhibitors, 
and hence gradually people give up that which few people see, 
and which is only confined to a select class of “ cognoscenti .” 
Mr. Charles Turner, of Slough, does indeed send sometimes 
boxes of marvellous blooms, but they are either labelled not for 
competition, or thrust into that marvellously heterogeneous 
class “ miscellaneous ,” and are probably awarded a five-shilling 
prize. These observations do not apply to the northern or 
midland districts; there, new flowers are annually raised, and 
exhibitions are expressly held for them ; and the fact that there 
is a National Show of them, manifests that they are somewhere 
