154 
THE FLORISTS JOURNAL. 
their characters and their colours, with the single exception of 
becoming less and less double in the course of years, which shows 
that a red rose and a white one are either distinct natural 
varieties, or that roses are more stubborn to the artificial character 
impressed upon them than hyacinths : besides this, there is a 
wonderful fecundity and energy in many of the roses, and they 
form new varieties without any human art. These varieties 
almost invariably depend upon superior energy in the pollen, or 
vehicle of the fertilizing power ; and so remarkable is this, that 
in some of the cultivated roses, hybrids, either artificial or acci¬ 
dental, often produce fertile seeds, when the pure plants of either 
variety are incapable of performing this operation. 
Such are some of the principles upon which the florist must 
work in seeking new varieties by this process ; and the cases in 
which these can be obtained are so numerous, and the process 
itself is so easy, that this is among the diversions of the florist: it 
is always a pleasing, and often a profitable diversion; for beauties 
of the first class may reward the experimentalist when he least 
thinks of it. 
It is not, however, exactly the occupation for professional 
florists, who live by the sale of their plants, because the experi¬ 
mentalist may have to wait long, and after all be disappointed in 
the end. Amateurs, who cultivate flowers solely or chiefly for 
the pleasure of cultivating them, are the proper parties for carry¬ 
ing on operations of this kind, and therefore it is mainly to them 
that we would be understood as directing our attention. Except 
the very grossest of the ignorant and the sensual, most people are 
now florists to some extent or other, and they are becoming more 
and more so every day. Perhaps the first stimulus to this^ was 
the desire of looking at flowers as objects of simple beauty, but 
a man of any speculation cannot long remain satisfied with this ; 
his next step is to study the nature and most successful mode of 
cultivating the individual plants, so that they shall be always 
healthy and vigorous, and appear in fine bloom when the season 
comes round. This is a much higher occupation than the former 
one, for it involves the study of many natural principles and laws; 
so that the man who cultivates plants with skill has already begun 
the career of the philosophy of nature,—the purest and the most 
mental of all merely human occupations. 
The third step, and one which ranks higher in a philosophical 
