ON PELARGONIUMS. 
197 
ON PELARGONIUMS. 
WITH AN ENGRAVING OF LYNe’s MARMION AND LYNE’s 
HESPERUS. 
In the course of the past season we had an opportunity of 
introducing a continental friend to one of the metropolitan ex¬ 
hibitions, and the visibly portrayed expression of astonishment 
which pervaded his countenance when the beautiful scene first 
opened on his sight is still present to us. Indeed, it is ques¬ 
tionable who received the most gratification ; our friend, from 
the grand, and to him novel, display of floral treasures which 
surrounded him, or ourselves, from his reiterated exclamations 
of surprise and admiration. But the splendour of those mag¬ 
nificent Pelargoniums I shall never forget, he afterwards re¬ 
marked ; they were perfect! And so thought the greater 
number of those who saw them ; all indeed, except the florist: 
his insatiable desire of novelty and improvement leads him 
continually to seek the one or the other, and sometimes, by 
chance, to hunt for faults where it is hardly possible to believe 
they exist; be that as it may, we cannot conceive a reason 
sufficiently good to account for the exclusion of several exist¬ 
ing strains of colour on the Pelargonium from the florist’s 
stock: why the white, lilac, and plum-coloured varieties should 
not be thought worthy of attention, we are at a loss to ima¬ 
gine. That they would as readily yield to the same care, and 
improve in shape to the same extent, as the crimson and rose- 
coloured varieties have done, there can be no doubt; nor can 
there be any hesitation about the additional attraction a col¬ 
lection would present with so many more colours in it. The 
Royal Botanic Society have already done much towards giving 
a direction and impetus to the production of a new' strain of 
these flowers, by offering prizes for kinds possessing the form 
and character of the usual fancy varieties and the colour of the 
common scarlet, — a most desirable change certainly, and one 
that is sure to entail some richly-coloured flowers; and we 
should be glad to see the matter carried still farther, so as to 
entirely break up the present monotonous character of the 
family, which must be admitted, even by the most ardent ad- 
