THE science of horticulture may be divided into two very distinct branches, the one comprising a general knowledge and practice of all classes of natural plants, fruit, and flowers. The other, a knowledge and practice of those particular classes which come under the head of florists' or show flowers, which derive their beauty from the extent to which they can be made to depart from the original stock. The general knowledge and practice of horticulture may be supposed to include that branch to which we allude; but experience tells us that he who possessed the general knowledge of all has rarely been known to excel in the culture of florists' flowers, whereas the best florists of the day for the cultivation of show flowers, have, in a vast majority of cases, been totally unacquainted with any thing beyond the flower for the growth of which they have been famed.

The culture of the tulip, polyanthus, auricula, carnation, pink, ranunculus, &c., was even a few years ago confined chiefly to the most illiterate class of society, and to their skill and perseverance we are mainly indebted for some of the most beautiful varieties now grown; yet

these persons knew no more about botany or general floriculture than the man in the moon. Our object is not to address ourselves to the uneducated, but while treating of floriculture we shall leave botany alone, except just so much as will be necessary to our purpose. An individual who grows, and is fond of a peculiar flower, will think quite as well of a plain description of those properties which distinguish a new variety from its predecessors, as if we gave them a page and a half of Latin by way of a text, and a botanical disquisition of half a sheet by way of a sermon. Our object is to be understood, and if we accomplish this we shall be content. We know that many works on botany, gardening, floriculture, &c., are already published; but, as far as we can see, they pay no attention to florists' flowers. Many of these works are edited with great talent, but they are only calculated to please and interest those persons who are acquainted with the science of botany, they who "drink deep or taste not;" we, on the contrary, endeavour to please the million. We profess not to delight the profound few, we merely aim at satisfying the multitude.

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FANNY KEMBLE.

THE desire of possessing a fine collection of tulips has not abated since the day that legislative interference checked, in some degree, the mania and the price in Holland. The only difference which is found in the taste of the present generation, as compared with the notions entertained a century or two since, is, that a flower must have something besides scarcity to recommend it; and instead of mere rarity inducing a large price, there must be a decided excellence in the formation, the colour, the habit of growth, or some other prominent good quality, before any grower of taste would

VOL. I.

ΜΑΝΙΑ.

even allow a new flower a place in his collection.

The tulip which is the subject of the present notice, and which will be accurately figured in our next number, was raised by the late Mr. Clarke of Croydon, and possesses several properties which no other flower can boast. Its shape is almost perfection. The delicacy of the pencilling round the edge places it before hundreds of esteemed flowers, and the colour is rich and beautiful,-the nearest approach to a black that is to be found in the whole tribe of byblomens, with a ground like snow itself.

At the death of Mr. Clarke, such was the anxiety of the cultivators of

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tulips to possess it, that the greatest disappointment was experienced by those who attended the sale of his effects, at learning that Mr. Davey, of the King'sroad, had been beforehand with them, and purchased it for one hundred pounds by private contract. Four bulbs, or thereabouts, constitutes the whole of the known stock, and they are now in the possession of John Goldham, Esq., of Pentonville, by whose kindness we are supplied with the drawings of its last blooms, now at our engravers. The tulip mania, as it has been called, is by no means on the wane; on the contrary, the Queen's plate, given annually for the best twelve blooms produced by members of the Metropolitan Society of Florists, has stimulated the fancy greatly; and a bed of tulips will shortly be deemed indispensable in an English garden. But it is not a little amusing to hear the condemnation of the tulip fancy by persons who care nothing about them. We were not long since in company with three or four gentlemen who laughed heartily at the idea of "any man being fool enough" (they appeared to have taken a lesson out of Hogg's book) to give twenty pounds for a tulip. One of these worthies had paid in his time two hundred pounds for a coin not intrinsically worth five shillings, or for ought we know, five pence, for we think it was

a copper one. A second had paid two thousand guineas for a picture; and the third thought nothing of giving fifty pounds for a brace of dogs, or a thousand pounds for a race-horse; and the feelings with which these prices were paid, were much the same as those which dictate the purchase of a fine tulip,-each was emulous to excel in whatever he took up as a fancy; and we have as much right to laugh at an old booby who, over his rusty-coin cabinet, feasts his eyes on his fiftyguinea old coppers and sixpences, or at the silly buyer of daubed canvass at a thousand guineas a yard, or at the madman who gives a thousand pounds for a horse to break his own neck with, as they have at the "fool who gives twenty or fifty guineas for a tulip.”

PANDORA.

The tulip which we give this month is the variety called Pandora, and was copied from a flower in Mr. Groom's collection, by Mr. Wakeling of Walworth; the flower was evidently out of character a little, and perhaps not in its prime; the flower was purchased at the late Mr. Clarke's sale, at Croydon. It is a fine byblomen when in good condition, and very delicately pencilled.

THE improvement which has been made in this flower in a short time, is equal to that of the dahlia in the same period, and its varieties seem almost as interminable. But a few years ago they were diminutive things, banished from the gardens with as much industry as would be applied to couchgrass, and now we have splendid varieties to the amount of several hundred, brilliant in colour, immense in size, and beautiful in form. Some of the varieties change so much in character at different seasons, and so much in colour while open, that it is difficult to determine in what state they are best. The variety called Mutabilis will, if a large plant, and in full flower, exhibit three or four such apparently distinct kinds of flowers that a person unacquainted with it, would take plucked blooms for as many differ

ent varieties, and Thomsonii, or as it is called since by many persons, Ajax, of which we give a coloured specimen in the present number, is scarcely, if any, less changeable. The specimen which accompanies the present July Number, was taken from a bloom cut in May, and is so perfect a representation of the original, in the state it then was, that we regret it was not given from blooms we have since seen on the same plant, although it is a fine large flower in all its states, and though coarser than any other of the family, is one of the principal varieties in a good collection; as a proof of this it has appeared in every set of blooms showed the present year at the numerous floricultural meetings in and round London. When we consider that in one collection exhibited at the Horticultural Society,