348 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
i 
hybridizing and the florists’ art, they need no other 
| refutation than the reply returned to her by Polixenes— 
“ This is an art 
Which does mend Nature,—change it rather: but 
The art itself is nature.” 
All the most customary names of this flower refer to 
its beauty and fragrance. Diantlius means a divine 
flower; Caryophyttus alludes to its dove-like, spicy 
odour; and Gillo-flower is a corruption of the French 
name Girojlier, which is also allusive to its clove-like 
fragrance.* 
When Parkinson wrote his “Paradisus” in 1039, and 
in a still earlier authority, Dethycke’s “ Gardener’s 
Labyrinth,” published in 1586, these flowers were 
divided into two classes; Carnations being the largest 
in flower and leaf, and the Gillojiouer characterized by 
less size in both. Parkinson says, they were then “the 
chiefest flowers of account in all our English gardens,” 
and they would not be less prized in those days of “ good 
Queen Bess,” because the first improved varieties were 
brought hither from Flanders by the Protestant worsted 
manufacturers, driven thence by the persecution of 
Philip the Second, and settled at Norwich in 1567. The 
Orange-tawney, or yellow Gilloflower, was not intro¬ 
duced until about thirty years after; for Gerarde, in 
1597, says, “a worshipful merchant of London, Master 
Nicholas Lete, procured it from Poland, and gave me 
thereof for my garden, which before that time was never 
seen nor heard of in these countries.” 
By the end of the century in which Parkinson wrote, 
the varieties had so vastly increased in number (Rea in 
1702 enumerates 360), that florists began to classify 
them; and we find them arranged as: “ Flake Carna¬ 
tions, having only two principal colours, disposed in 
broad flakes or stripes quite through the petals. Bizarre 
Carnations, having three or four different colours—red, 
purple, scarlet, &c., in different shades, irregularly dis¬ 
posed in spots and stripes. Piquette Carnations, having 
always a white ground, pounced, or finely spotted with 
red, scarlet, purple, or other colours; and Painted Lady 
Carnations, having the petals a bright red or purple 
above, and entirely white beneath. 
Modern florists only retain the three first classes; and 
they have changed the characteristics of the third,—for 
a Picotee is no longer a spotted carnation, but is a car¬ 
nation with all the colour confined to a border, of 
slight or extended width, round the edge of each petal. 
Miller and Abercrombie, in the editions of their Dic¬ 
tionaries published in the concluding half of the last 
century, are the earliest authorities enumerating the 
properties required to characterize a first-rate carnation. 
We have compared these with those given by Hogg and 
others, and find them all concentrated and improved in 
Glenny’s Properties of Flowers, from which, slightly 
altered, we extract the following:— 
* Chaucer calls the Carnation Girofler; Shakespeare, we see, adopted 
another corruption, and there are others all tending to show that the name 
is derived from the French and not from the English words, July-flower, 
as many have supposed. Carnation alludes to the flesh-colour which 
characterized the earlier varieties. 
[July 25. 
PROPERTIES OF THE CARNATION. 
1. The flower should be not less than two and a half 
inches across. 
2. The guard or lower petals, not less than six in 
number, must be broad, thick, and smootli on the out¬ 
side, free from notch or serrature on the edge, and 
lapping over each other sufficiently to form a circular 
rose-like flower; the more perfectly round the outline the 
better. 
3. Each layer of petals should be smaller than the 
layer immediately uuder it; there should not be less 
than five or six layers of petals laid regularly, and the 
flower should so rise in the centre as to form half a ball. 
4. The petals should be stiff, free from notches, and 
slightly cupped. 
5 The ground should be pure white, without specks 
of colour. 
6. The stripes of colour should be clear and distinct, 
not running into one another, nor confused, but dense, 
smooth at the edges of the stripes, and well defined. 
7. The colours must be bright and clear, whatever 
they may be; if there be two colours, the darker one 
cannot be too dark, or form too strong a contrast with 
the lighter. With scarlet the perfection would be a 
black; with pink there cannot be too deep a crimson ; 
with lilac, or light purple, the second colour cannot be 
too dark a purple. 
8. If the colours run into the white and tinge it, or 
the white is not pure, the fault is very great, and 
pouncy spots or specks are highly objectionable. 
9. The pod of the bloom should be long and large, 
to enable the flower to bloom without bursting it; but 
this is rare ; they generally require to be tied about 
half-way, and the upper part of the calyx opened down 
