RELATIONS BETWEEN PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 
147 
colours; and the gorgeous heartseases of the garden become the 
humble pansy, which, in many places, overruns the fields. Those 
which we have noticed are striking instances, and instances of 
very common and very hardy plants. Though the elements of 
that beauty which art develops must be in them, in their simple 
or natural state, we are acquainted with no natural circumstance, 
or combination of natural circumstances, by which this beauty can 
be developed. It is all art, the production of the florist himself; 
and if he shall not succeed, he never thinks of going to nature, 
or natural circumstances, anv more than a man who makes chro- 
nometers or steam-engines thinks of going to nature to learn the 
mechanical structure of his machines. A florist of this descrip¬ 
tion goes to another florist who succeeds better than himself in 
preserving and improving the artificial beauties of the individual 
species, and endeavours to get the better of others in the market 
of the same. Such florists, of course, care little for the philosophy 
of floriculture, or for philosophy of any kind,—they are mechanics, 
and succeed or fail upon the same principles as other mechanics. But 
there is a higher order of florists, even trading florists, who must 
be intimately acquainted with the climatal adaptation of plants, 
both in respect of healthy growth and of fine flowering; or, 
which amounts to the same thing, they must employ men who are 
so acquainted. Professional growers of this description are usually 
styled Exotic Nurserymen; because they obtain most of their 
plants from foreign countries, either in the plants themselves, or 
in the seed. The leading men among them employ collectors to 
find the plants or seeds in the situations in which they grow 
naturally; and this is, of course, attended with a good deal of 
expense. Whether they obtain the plants themselves or the seeds, 
they do not generally have any artificial foundation to proceed 
upon ; they find their plants in wild nature, and they have nothing 
but nature to guide them in the cultivation. If, as is generally 
the case, the collector is a man of talent and observation, he 
usually sends such an account of the locality of the plant as enables 
the party to whom it is sent to grow it with some success. 
This is the way in which new additions, that is, additions of new 
genera and species, are made to our cultivated Flora; and as the 
very novelty of these plants gives them a value in the eyes of the 
fashionable, they fetch large prices ; and the original possessor is a 
little chary of selling them to the trade, until the novelty and 
