536 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
April 21, 1888. 
FLORICULTURE. 
National Auricula & Primula Society. 
The annual exhibition of the Southern Section of this 
society will be held on Tuesday next, in the Drill 
Hall of the London Scottish Volunteers, James Street, 
Westminster (adjoining St. James’s Park Station, 
District Railway). A luncheon will be provided at the 
Hotel Windsor, Victoria Street, at 1.30 p.m., for 
members and their friends, at which Sir Trevor 
Lawrence, Bart, M.P. will preside, and Samuel Barlow, 
Esq., J.P., will occupy the vice-chair. We learn from 
Mr. Douglas that the prospects of a good show are 
much brighter than they were a week ago, the flowers 
having come on rapidly since the change in the weather. 
One of the leading northern exhibitors has signified 
his intention of being present, and it is hoped that 
more will be able to do the same. 
Florists and their Critics. 
Florists in all generations have been assailed for their 
hard-and-fast lines, the narrowness of their sympathies, 
and their inability to understand the breadth, the 
largeness, and the glories of nature. Let us see what 
the fathers had to say on the matter. My dear friend, 
the late Mr. J. F. Wood, editor of the Midland Florist, 
was eminently a representative florist. No man more 
than he better understood or more keenly admired the 
points of a fine Tulip or a richly-marked Carnation. 
As a judge of the latter, no one of his day, save the 
late Mr. Charles Turner, stood on the same level with 
him. He is speaking at a gathering of florists as¬ 
sembled to do honour to a Carnation grower in the 
midst of a great display of the flower, and says of the 
“pursuits of the florist” :—“Dealing with that which 
so purely appealed to the eye, and which required, in 
all cases, a certain amount of preparatory study before 
the excellence of the subject presented could be appre¬ 
ciated, it was no wonder that misapprehension existed. 
But that misapprehension was no bar to the excellence 
of the florist’s aims or his labours, nor was it any bar 
to the propriety of his pursuit or the truthfulness of his 
taste that he turned with disgust from an inferior type 
of the cultivated flower, and would be pleased only 
with the highest attainable excellence. Would the art 
of painting be condemned because Raphael could not 
delight in the daub suspended over a village ale-house ? 
Would the beauty of sculpture be denied because a 
Flaxman, a Canova, or a Thorwaldsen would not be 
content with the crude botchings of an ignorant mason ? 
No ; and the florist no more deserved reprehension for 
the rejection of imperfect types of cultivation.” 
“Another grand error, which he had often found 
prevailing with respect to the pursuits of the florist, 
was the idea that it implanted in him a distaste for 
wild flowers. Why, to the florist all nature is 
glorious. The blade of grass beneath his feet, the 
banks of Cowslips and Primroses, the field of gold- 
cups, the waving corn, the foliage of trees, the un¬ 
dulating plains, the towering hills, the dense forests 
and beetling crags—all, all are beautiful, filling him 
with a delight which only those so inspired can 
realise.” Adverting to the debt of gratitude due to the 
explorers of the past and present day, men to whose 
energy we owed some of the loveliest gems which 
adorned our gardens and conservatories, and ivho in 
their pursuit had braved the dangers to be encountered 
from savage beasts, and more savage men—penetrated 
the thickest jungles, and opened up countries, till then 
hermetically sealed to civilised men—Mr. Wood dwelt 
upon the delights of floriculture. “From the prince to 
the peasant, from the merchant in his counting-house 
to the toiling artisan freed from the labour of his work¬ 
shop, on all alike it sheds a charm.” 
Can our friends find any lack of harmony, or of that 
upon which harmony always must rest—truth, in these 
ringing trumpet notes ? 
Another speaker, following Mr. Wood, said, quoting 
from an eminent modem writer: “Flowers, besides 
being beautiful in themselves, are suggestive of every 
other kind of beauty—of gentleness, of youthfulness, 
of hope. They are evidence of nature’s good nature ; 
proofs manifest that she means us well, and more than 
well; that she loves to give us the beautiful in addition 
to the useful. They neutralise bad with good ; 
beautify good itself, make life livelier, human bloom 
more blooming, and anticipate the spring of heaven 
over the winter of the grave. Their very frailty and 
the shortness of their lives please us, because of this their 
indestructible association with beauty ; for while they 
make us regret our own like transitory existence, they 
sooth us with a consciousness, however dim, of our 
power to perceive beauty ; therefore of our link with 
something divine and deathless, and of our right to hope 
that immortal thoughts will have immortal realisation.” 
These words, spoken at Derby on August 8th, 1854, 
were addressed to an audience purely and simply of 
florists—the largest I have ever known gathered 
together, and the ringing cheers which followed their 
utterance plainly betokened how heartily they were 
endorsed. Do our critics think florists have become 
different men in the thirty-four years which have 
passed since that day ?— E. S. D. 
James’s Strain of Cinerarias. 
The show of Cinerarias which Mr. James has in his 
very admirable long-span houses at Farnliam Royal, 
Slough, is not less beautiful than last year, whilst the 
plants exhibit almost unusual compactness of habit— 
part product of good cultivation and ample light and 
air, and part the result of the excellence of the strain. 
Without doubt the plants are all well grown, but then 
there is no speciality of culture. It is not more than 
can be seen in any other garden where houses are 
adapted to the plants. Generally, quality in the 
flowers is therefore more due to the superior excellence 
of the strain than to exceptional culture. The bulk of 
the 2,000 plants in such beautiful bloom are in 24’s— 
not large ones, but an admirable size for flowering plants. 
The former special feature of the strain—by some 
thought a faulty one, in that the colours were chiefly 
seifs, and therefore a little sombre—is now counteracted 
by the introduction of some very attractive light hues 
into it, so that one house is full of seifs in big blocks 
of colours, and another one is as full of light-edged 
flowers, also in blocks of colours. The seifs include 
white, blue, purple, cerise, red, and crimson. The 
Cineraria of Ten Years Ago. 
light flowers have various coloured edgings in great 
variety, and more or less deep. Generally the size of 
the flowers increases yearly, not a few being of re¬ 
markable dimensions, but still all are borne in good 
heads. 
Really we seem to have reached the height of per¬ 
fection in form in Cinerarias, as the best flowers show 
such superior excellence, that advance in this direction 
seems impossible. Flowers 3 ins. across, and even 
larger, as shown in the accompanying illustration, 
all the blooms being engraved natural size, seem 
also big enough for anything ; and whilst it is 
impossible to place any limit upon the development 
of nature in the hands of the florist, yet, as far as 
present tastes go, it does seem as if Cineraria blooms 
were large enough for any taste now. It was specially 
noticeable that whilst the Cineraria houses were some¬ 
what shaded when the sun burst out with force, yet 
the doors at either end were kept wide open from early 
till late, not only to keep the structures as cool as 
possible, but also to enable the bees from the hives 
near to have free access. These insects were lured into 
the houses in large numbers, and worked hard in 
gathering pollen, thus also fertilising the flowers. 
The flowers so faithfully represented in our illus¬ 
tration in all respects excepting the colours are:—(a) 
Marie, pure white with a purple disc, new this season ; 
(6) Coquette, dark crimson-mauve, with a broad white 
zone round the purple disc ; (c) Favourite, reddish 
purple, tinted with purple where it merges into the 
white zone round the dark purplish crimson centre ; 
( d) Gaiety, a warm rosy carmine self, with a pale disc ; 
(e) an unnamed purplish crimson flower, with a broad 
white zone ; and (/) Irene, very dark rich purple shaded 
with violet, and having a narrow white band round 
the disc. Growers of these grand decorative plants 
have witnessed a marvellous improvement in the size 
and quality of the flowers during the last few years, 
and which—as far, at least, as size is concerned—can 
easily be realised by comparing the accompanying small 
illustration, prepared some ten years ago, with the 
flowers of to-day. 
Primulas and Cyclamens at Farnham Royal. 
The large collection of Chinese Primulas grown by Mr. 
J. James, at Woodside, Farnham Royal, as seen a few 
days ago, were passing into the seeding. The best 
whites were the select old white, the Fern-leaved Snow¬ 
flake, a real beauty ; and Purity, a grand white on red 
Fern-shaped foliage. The blue form is grown well, 
but is, even in the bright light, ineffective. A very 
much finer and more pleasing form is a splendid selec¬ 
tion of the lavender-hued strain, named Mary James. 
Advance is a very pleasing rich magenta-hued form, 
the flowers very fine ; and of a deeper shade is Sion 
Red, a superb selection of the Chiswick Red, and one 
of the richest we have seen. The double scarlet is seen 
in a big batch, and a wonderfully fine thing it is. A 
selection named Great Western, having huge cerise-red 
flowers on dark semi-Fern leaves, promises to make a 
fine novelty. It is astonishing to find how fast selec¬ 
tions of this kind develop out in the pure air and light 
of Farnham Royal. 
Judging by the same result, in a very few years we 
shall doubtless see some superb things in the way of 
dark red Cyclamens from Farnham Royal. Amongst 
some seedling darks, Mr. James has one or two specially 
fine—indeed, the finest darks we have seen, being 
almost Giganteums in character, and of wonderful 
form and substance. One plant carrying some half- 
dozen flowers exhibits such fine quality, that it would 
have received the highest honours easily anywhere. 
The whites and the rosy hues are beautiful also, as well 
as very fine. Some few of the rose-tinted flowers should 
prove the forerunners of a beautiful strain in Cyclamens. 
Presently also there will be a grand show of Calceo¬ 
larias of doubtless the finest strain in the world. 
What a sensation would be created could Mr. James 
but set up at any of the London spring or early summer 
shows banks of some 500 plants of his Cinerarias or 
Calceolarias ! 
Reflesed Japanese Chrysanthemums. 
The Revision Committee (Messrs. Lewis Castle, George 
Gordon, and Harman Payne) appointed by the National 
Chrysanthemum Society to tabulate and arrange the 
returns for the new catalogue, have prepared the fol¬ 
lowing list of reflexed Japanese varieties as a guide to 
growers intending to compete in the new classes 
provided for these varieties. It must be pointed out 
that the varieties named as Japanese reflexed are only 
excluded from the true reflexed class, they can be 
shown in all the other Japanese classes as before. 
Nearly two-thirds of the .thirty members of the com¬ 
mittee have named varieties which they consider should 
be classed in the new section, and a total exceeding 
sixty varieties have been thus mentioned. The follow¬ 
ing twenty-four have obtained the highest number of 
votes, and will form the select list recommended by 
the committee for exhibition. They are arranged in 
the order of merit as determined by the votes, and 
those that are also specially adapted for culture as 
specimen plants are indicated by an asterisk. 
*Elaine 
•Maiden’s Blush 
Triomphe du Nord 
*Dr. Macary 
La Triomphante 
L’Adorable 
Magdeleine Tezier 
*M. Astorg 
Amy Furze 
Jeanne Delaux 
Pere Delaux 
M. John Laing 
*Val d’Andorre 
*M. Henry Jacotot 
•Flambeau 
Gorgeous 
*La Nymphe 
Criterion 
•L’Africaine 
•Roseum superbum 
Phoebus 
•Margot 
•William Holmes 
•Tendresse. 
A few have advocated transferring Cullingfordi to 
the Japanese reflexed section, but the majority are in 
favour of its retention in the true reflexed class. 
Cinerarias. 
I was pleased to observe, in the case of the batch of 
Cinerarias exhibited recently by Mr. J. James, 
that the dark disk or centre predominated. If 
anyone will compare two flowers having a white ring 
round the disk and a margin of crimson or purple, 
one flower having a dark, and the other a light grey 
disk, they will see how much more of life and expres¬ 
sion is imparted to the former than to the latter. A 
grey disk imparts a cold and inanimate appearance to 
the blossoms, in the same way as a pale tube does to 
an Auricula ; while a golden tube lights it up with the 
brilliancy of a jewel. The snowy purity of the white 
variety, Maria, which received a First Class Certificate, 
