129 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Decembee 4, 1830. 
Defiance, Camerson, Mount Etna, Pilot, Auguste Mid, 
Yesta, and Progne. The six following he thinks a child 
might manage to bring out to exhibit in cut blooms as 
true to shape as the best dressed flower, as the only dif¬ 
ficulty is to hit on a way of keeping them from coming 
naturally, and in the easiest manner up to the standard 
shape :—Dupont de l’Eure, Plutus, .Nonpareil, Yesta, 
Queen of England, and Themis; and the next are the 
half-dozen which are most difficult to manage in the whole 
family :—Pio Nono, Two-coloured Incurved, Madame 
Andre, Campestroni, Miss Kate, and Raymond. The 
next is a selection of twenty-four kinds of the best Pom- 
pones, or “as the very best” for growing as specimens : 
—Aurora Borealis, Bob, Drin Drin, Duruflet, Mrs. 
Dix, Andromeda, Donna Alba Gonzales, Cedo Nulli, 
General Canrobert, Asmodie, Helen, La Yogue, L'Escar- 
boucle, Sainte Thais, Trophee, Mustapha, La Gitana, Miss 
Julia, Miss Talfourd, Madame Fould, Mr. Astie, Poly¬ 
carp, Nelly, and Francis I. 
He has the same abhorrence to the table-top-shaped or 
squat training as myself, and he fully and freely agrees 
with me that no mode of training Pompones is one-half 
so telling as the pyramid. 
The following are the cream of all the new large 
Chrysanthemums which he and the other large growers 
had sent out last spring for the first time, and here 
it will be seen how closely he has hit on Mr. Salter’s 
and on Mr. Bird’s choice, already entered in this stud¬ 
book :—Alarm (Clark), dark violet crimson; Arthur 
Wortley (Salter) ; Bouquet des Flore (Clark), dark 
red crimson; General Hardinge (Clark), Indian red 
with orange shade; Mrs. William Holborn (Salter), 
ivory white; Novelty (Clark), blush white ; Negro Boy 
(Clark), very dark crimson; Pictoreum Roseum (Clark), 
red salmon ; Saccoa Nova (Saco vera), lilac ; Queen of 
the Isles (Salter), a great improvement on Yesta, and 
pure white; Yellow Perfection (Clark), a model flower, 
a great improvement on Plutus, and a golden yellow, not 
so early as most of the above. 
The following are the very best score out of the whole 
tribe of older kinds; for Mr. Holmes and I went 
through the whole collection for that score, but he could 
do it in his arm-chair just as well:—Beaute du Nord, 
Cassandra, Chevalier Damage, Dr. Maclean, Defiance, 
Delight, or Webb’s Delight, explained from Mr. Bird’s, 
Dupont de l’Eure, Glory, Julie Lagravere the best 
crimson, Mount Vesuvius, Madame Lebois, Nonpareil, 
Prince Albert, Pio Nono, Plutus, Pilot, Queen of England, 
Themis, Yulcan, and Vesta. 
Now, you have three selections from the stocks, and 
from the experience of three of the best judges and three 
of the best practitioners in England in the three different 
and distinct modes of managing the Chrysanthemum, 
together with the best wishes of your instructor, if, in¬ 
deed, you are not already above his mark; and if you 
are you will the more readily join your best wishes for 
the spread of this branch of the truth among the natives. 
But what about the mystery of dressing Chrysanthe¬ 
mums ? I told you lately how completely I was deceived 
on that point after Mr. Bird let me into all his secrets ; 
and now hear what Mr. Salter and Mr. Holmes tell us all 
in their respective catalogues on that head. Mr. Salter 
says incurved flowers only attain the model of perfection, 
and such as are seen at London shows from four to six 
inches in diameter. “ To obtain this size peculiar treat¬ 
ment is adopted, the whole vigour of the plant being 
concentrated in four or five blooms, and all loose or mis¬ 
shapen petals (florets) cai’efully arranged or removed ”— 
that is. if the four or five blooms do not come up naturally 
to the model, the dresser must bring them up by his 
cunning craft. “ It would be folly,” says Mr. Salter, “ to 
disguise this fact, which is only noticed to prevent dis¬ 
appointment to those who may be led to suppose that 
flowers of these dimensions are the result of ordinary 
culture.” 
In his catalogue Mr. Holmes says—“ That unfair dress¬ 
ing does exist there can be no doubt, and the same remark 
applies to every florist’s flower, but ’tis the exception, not 
the rule ; but those who maintain that the fine blooms of 
the present day are the result of dressing are in error. 
That the flower may be improved by dressing there can¬ 
not be a doubt. It is quite fair, I think, to improve the 
general appearance of a flower, but it is unfair and dis¬ 
honest to disguise it. No amount of dressing will make 
a bad flower a good one, and I am quite of opinion the 
finest blooms are produced without any dressing at all.” 
And I am the first convert to that opinion through the 
evidence of my senses. 
Of dressing flowers Mr. Bird says, “A fool and his 
money are soon parted ; the practice will not pay, but it 
is better to spend money that way than in drink.” His 
success in taking the first prizes with cut flowers shows 
that the Chinese and English way of saving luxuriant 
foliage down to the edge of the pot, according to our 
scientific notion of the value of good leaves well exposed, 
is not in the smallest degree necessary, nor does it add to 
the size, or shape, or beauty of any one kind of Chry¬ 
santhemum. His show-hoi\se rather represented a young 
forest very much in want of thinning, and without a leaf 
within two feet or a yard from the ground. 
The nature of this path to success can only be ex¬ 
plained one way, and it is this : The stems of the Chry¬ 
santhemum, the Pelargonium, Justicia, Clerodendron, 
and all other soft-wooded plants, which we treat on the 
herbaceous principle, so to speak, which we cut down 
yearly, or use for one season only, like as we do the 
stems of the Chrysanthemum itself—such stems need the 
use of luxuriant foliage no longer than is necessary to 
ripen that part of themselves; and though we maintain 
the leaves on the ripe stem with our highest art, it is to 
please the eye only. This doctrine will be hard to hear, 
yet it is in accordance with the law of Nature neverthe¬ 
less, and you cannot gainsay it or explain the practice of 
the grower of model Chrysanthemum flowers on any other 
theory or solid basis. In short, there may be, and often 
is, in practice, the use and abuse of leaves. Just think 
that over in your mind, and mind that Mr. Bird can only 
afford to keep leaves on his Chrysanthemums as long as 
they contribute to the value of his flowers. Anything 
which will not pay in solid cash he leaves to young 
roosters and fancy-feathered folks, and so all the ripe 
shoots in his show-house are as free of leaves as this 
page ; and there is neither a turn nor twist in his manner 
of training his plants, for he allows every plant to take 
its natural way till it shows the “first bud”—that is, the 
first flower-bud, and there he stops ninety-nine kinds out 
of every hundred for the first. The great majority of 
kinds he blooms “on the second bud” on the shoots 
which come after-the first stopping, and some few kinds 
he “ pushes on to the third bud.” The latter must con¬ 
sequently be twice stopped, and the bloom come from 
the third start, so to speak, and which requires the follow¬ 
ing explanation In March he puts four suckers from 
the old stool into a 48-sized pot, and these are “ tbe first 
to start” and make but one of his future plants. Every 
one of his pots has thus four plants in it. The first start 
is never stopped till the first flower-bud is seen. The 
first show or first flower-bud of all his exhibition plants 
he destroys, and I examined every one of them, and found 
that to be his universal practice. At every stop, or 
stopping, the Chrysanthemum divides into three branches. 
Then with four plants in a pot up to the end of July— 
say he has only four tops, stop the four at the first show, 
and three shoots from each give twelve shoots to one pot; 
and if you confine the flowers to one on a shoot there arc 
twelve flowers for a pot—twice too many for some kinds ; 
then the blooms are left only one on the strongest of each 
of half the shoots. 
Well, six pots so managed, and a different kind in 
each pot, will bring him in his five guineas, or his silver 
