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PROPERTIES OF CLIMBING ROSES.

1. The petals should be thick, broad, and smooth at the edges.

2. The flower should be highly perfumed, or, as the dealers call it, fragrant.

3. The flower should be double to the centre, high on the crown, round in the outline, and regular in the disposition of the petals.

4. The joints should be short from leaf to leaf. The blooms should come on very short branches, and all up the main shoots. The plant should be always growing and developing its flowers, from spring to autumn, and the foliage should completely hide all the stems, whether the plant be on front of a house or on any given device.

Having now travelled through the chief of the families which require separate notices of their properties, the first three properties numbered being required in all of them, we add, by way of a finish for all, except Mosses, that

The foliage should be bright green and shining, and, though not likely to be found in many varieties, it should be permanent, and constitute an evergreen.

By this we mainly establish a point in favour of an evergreen. We mention nothing about size, because size forms the distinction between many roses which have no other difference, and has little or nothing to do with the properties of the Rose.

THE PROPERTIES OF THE RANUNCULUS.

1. The flower should be of the form of twothirds of a ball, two inches in diameter, the under part of it square or horizontal.

2. The outline of the bloom should therefore form a perfect circle.

3. The petals should be thick, smooth on the edges and gently cupped; they should lie close, so that very little but the edges should be seen, and that little only the inside surface.

4. The flower should be symmetrical to the centre, which should be close, so as to perfectly conceal the seed-vessel, even with the surface, and perfect so as to exhibit a complete finish to the surrounding petals.

5. The colour should be very dense, whatever be its hue; if an edged flower, the edging should be well defined, and the marking even and uniform in every petal; in no case should the ground colour break through the edging, but spotted flowers with one spot on each petal are allowable.

6. The stem should be strong, perpendicular, and long enough to raise the flower clear six inches above the foliage, and no more, but this has reference to the plant, rather than to the flower.

7. Striped flowers are not perfect, nor are flowers speckled on the edges; the colour or edging of flowers, like those of edged picotees or tulips, ought not to exhibit a single break.

From what we have said, the reader will

observe that all thin petalled flowers, all those with serrated or notched edges, all those which are rough in the outline, flat or sunk in the centre, or confused in the laying of the petals, are faulty; and in choosing from the stock while the flowers are in bloom, they are to be avoided. The real objection to thin petals is, that they do not preserve their form so well, nor remain in perfection so long, nor give the colour so dense. Shaded flowers are allowable, though stripes are not; but like the exhibitors. of picotees, the growers will retain the speckled edges, though they are decidedly inferior to those which possess the colour unbroken at the extreme edge. The true spotted varieties have only one spot on each petal, but the spot must be well defined. The rank in which these different classes of flowers stand, is-first, the edged; second, the spotted; third, the shaded; fourth, the selfs. We do not place the broken edged or speckled in any rank at all.

PROPERTIES OF THE SWEETWILLIAM.

With regard to the properties of a Sweetwilliam

1. The head of bloom should be large.

2. The individual flowers should be round, smooth on the edge, flat on the surface, thick in the petal, and the edges should touch each other without lapping over,

3. The colour should be pure, free from speckles-if marked, the circles should be well defined.

4. The divisions in the petals should not show, and the footstalks of the individual flowers should be long enough to throw them up above the green of the plant itself; there should not be less than nineteen pips or flowers in the truss.

PROPERTIES OF THE CARNATION.

1. The flower should be not less than two and a half inches across.

2. The guard or lower petals, not less than six in number, must be broad, thick, and smooth on the outside, free from notch or serrature, and lap over each other sufficiently to form a circular roseate flower, the more round the outline the better.

3. Each row of petals should be smaller than the row immediately under it; there should not be less than five or six rows of petals laid regularly, and the flower should rise and form a good bold centre or crown; and in quantity should form half a ball.

4. The petals should be stiff and slightly cupped.

5. The ground should be pure snow-white, without specks of colour.

6. The stripes of colour should be clear and distinct, not running into one another, nor con

fused, but dense, smooth at the edges of the stripes, and well defined.

7. The colours must be bright and clear, whatever they may be; if there be two colours, the darker one cannot be too dark, or form too strong a contrast with the lighter. With scarlet

the perfection would be a black; with pink there' cannot be too deep a crimson; with lilac, or light purple, the second colour cannot be too dark a purple.

8. If the colours run into the white and tinge it, or the white is not pure, the fault is very great, and pouncy spots or specks are highly objectionable.

9. The pod of the bloom should be long and large, to enable the flower to bloom without bursting it; but this is rare; they generally require to be tied about half way, and the upper part of the calyx opened down to the tie of each division ; yet there are some which scarcely require any assistance, and this is a very estimable quality.

THE PROPERTIES OF THE PICOTEE.

The properties of form are similar to those of the carnation; but the distinction between carnations and picotees is, that the colour of the former is disposed in unequal stripes, going from the centre to the outer edges, and that of the picotees is disposed on the outer edges of the petals, and radiates inwards, and the more uniform this is disposed the better.

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