146 
THE FLORIST’S JOURNAL. 
them alive and restore them to vigour. One complains that his 
plants do not flower, but produce new shoots instead; and yet 
the plants themselves appear to be in the most vigorous health. 
Another complains that his plants, though by nature evergreens, 
untimely shed their leaves, and thus render unsightly the places 
which they are intended to adorn. A third complains that some 
general atrophy has fallen upon his plant, which has covered it 
over with a sickly hue of incurable disease, suspended its growth, 
and is fast blotting it out from the catalogue of living plants. In 
short, there is scarcely a disease, a suspension of growth, or a 
symptom of decay, of which we do not receive complaints. Those 
complaints, too, almost invariably refer to plants which are new to 
the cultivator ; and which, in consequence of their newness, are 
costly. It may happen that in themselves, and when in their 
native climate, they are exceedingly hardy plants, and grow in 
waste and neglected places, flourishing there with great vigour, 
and blooming with great beauty. 
Those who have complained to us of these mischances, and who 
feel them the most severely, are not professional florists. They select 
certain florist-flowers as the subjects of their culture, and that culture 
embracing few or many, according to the extent of the establish¬ 
ment ; what they work upon is not simply nature, but certain pro¬ 
perties which have been obtained by long artificial culture, as we find 
in the case of the tulip, the hyacinth, and even the common hearts¬ 
ease ; for these, together with almost every other florists flower, 
have been so changed by artificial means, that they do not seem the 
same plants as the very species out of which they have been bred 
when those species were in a state of nature. When these florist- 
flowers are highly cultivated, so as to produce those varieties 
which the professional florists most desire, and by which they make 
their profits, and then are allowed to fall into neglect, either because 
they have ceased to be fashionable, or for any other reason, they 
are not immediately attacked by those diseases and decays of. 
which our correspondents complain; on the contrary, they, gene¬ 
rally speaking, become much more hardy and vigorous than when 
they are cultivated with all the art of the florist ; and befoie they 
begin to decay, they retreat back again to that natural state out of 
which they have been bred by the floral art; as, for instance, the 
many and splendidly-coloured hyacinths, single 01 double, retieat 
back to the common blue bell hyacinth; the tulips lose their splendid 
