FEBRUARY. 
29 
was there in them to fire a florist’s heart with rapture and enthusiasm ? And I 
hope, for the sake of true horticulture and its glorious past, all the poetry has 
not yet been, nor is it yet likely to be, pressed out of it, though rapidly ceasing 
to be a distinct branch of horticulture. At best, the double flowers were but 
malformations without pretensions to regularity of petal to give the desideratum 
of form, without harmony and distinctness of colours—flowers that would effec¬ 
tually puzzle the most competent judge to compile for them the points of quality 
by which he would decide on their merits. With but very few exceptions they 
did not yield that profuseness and continuity of bloom that are found in the 
single kinds. They were neither brilliant nor showy, and their utility as de¬ 
corative plants was considerably over-stated. Let them perish ! and may no 
resurrection ever rend the grave to which they will be consigned. 
And then those hateful-looking, loose, irregularly-shaped, easy-flowering 
varieties, without a single pretension to form, but with a great deal too much 
substance, generally having the colours as inharmoniously blended together as 
to be quite confused, as if Nature had for once been guilty of a bad piece of 
artistic execution. In fact, the “beauty” of many of them was as little dis¬ 
cernible as that of a toad would be whose skin had become slightly suffused 
with a violet hue. They were absolutely worthless as decorative plants, nor 
were they suitable for bedding-purposes. They have been well described by M. 
Ch. Naudin as “ monsters, which the prevailing fashion regards as so many 
marks of perfection.” 
For bedding-purposes (and used as bedding plants, what can be much 
more attractive when judiciously grouped ?) nothing can be better than 
a well-formed pure white flower of the P. nyctaginiflora species, and a good 
purple of the P. violacea species, and to these can be added the bright crimson 
variety with white throat like Countess of Ellesmere, and the parti-coloured 
variety Madame Ferguson. I remember a few years ago being much 
struck with the beauty of a Petunia-bed at Elsenham Hall Gardens, Bishop 
Stortford. The bed was formed of four lobes, each lobe being planted with 
a variety in the way of the foregoing colours, except that instead of using 
the variety with the white throat, there was a seedling bright crimson flower, 
something like Purple Prince, but having a throat heavily pencilled with clear 
violet. Though the weather had been, and still was excessively dry, the bed 
was a “ blaze of floral beauty,” and the afternoon sun beaming on it, brought 
out sharply and vividly the individuality of colour of each lobe of the bed, 
and at the same time merged this individuality into a blended harmony of a 
most agreeable character. From the intercrossing of the two species alluded to 
above, which can be done most readily, have been derived hybrids as fertile 
as their parents. Of these hybrids M. Ch. Naudin has observed, “ In the first 
generation all these hybrids are alike; in the second they vary in the most 
remarkable degree, some reverting to the white species, others to the purple, 
and a large residue showing all the shades between the two. When these 
varieties are fecundated artificially by each other, as is the practice of some 
gardeners, we obtain a third generation still more parti-coloured; and continuing 
the process we arrive at (the most) extreme varieties.” The fancy of the hy- 
bridiser will actuate him to select what form he pleases as his models, whether 
symmetrical in form and harmonious in colour on the one hand, or grotesque 
in outline and ill-defined and confused in colour on the other; but the varia¬ 
tions that are to find a place in the garden should at least partake of the charac¬ 
teristics generally considered essential by florists—form, colour, substance, 
distinctness, &c., and not be hideous and unlovely formations merely, that 
have neither attractiveness nor utility to recommend them. To these essential 
points must be superadded by the hybridiser, short, stiff, and yet vigorous 
