1878.] LILY MRS. ANTHONY WATERER. 97 LILY MRS. ANTHONY WATERER. UR figure of this beautiful variety, which is probably the first well-authenticated hybrid Lily, was made from plants growing in the nursery of Mr. Anthony Waterer, at Knap Hill, Surrey. It is a hybrid produced by L. speciosum rubrum fertilised by L. auratum, and as will be seen, is of the speciosum type, but with sufficient evidence of the influence of its pollen parent. The habit is that of L. speciosum, and the flowers are of large size, pure white, richly spotted with crimson. The hybrid was raised by Mr. G. Thomson, then living as gardener at Stansted Park, Emsworth, Hants, now Garden Superintendent at the Crystal Palace, who has obligingly furnished the following particulars of its history: : "In 1867 I first flowered Lilium auratum, and with pollen taken from its flowers I fertilised those on a plant of Lilium speciosum rubrum. Only one seed-bearing pod was obtained, and this contained but few seeds, which were sown in a pan, and kept in a cold frame. At this distance of time I cannot state exactly how long the seeds were in germinating, but my impression is that nice little bulbs were formed by the spring of the following year, one of these being the hybrid LILY MRS. ANTHONY WATERER. "This Lily has had an eventful life. The first misfortune which befell it was during its first resting period, when the pan containing it was, by inadvertence, emptied out under the potting-bench, the result being the loss of most of the seedlings. It came into flower in July, 1870, and was exhibited before the Floral Committee at Kensington, where it was awarded a First-class Certificate, under the name of Purity. I may here mention a quality which I considered this Lily to possess above all others, and which, I believe, it still retainsnamely, endurance. It was in flower for three or four days before it was cut and sent to London from the time I sent it until I received it back a week elapsed, and it was kept in water for some days after that. I understood Mr. Anthony Waterer to say that it was with him more enduring than any Lily he knew, which quite accords with my experience. 66 Returning to the history of the hybrid, I may mention that I left Stansted Park soon after having flowered it, and it was then placed in the hands of a London nurseryman to keep for me; but unfortunately, in the anxiety to make more of it, it was as nearly lost as possible. When I was appointed to the superintendence No. 7. IMPERIAL SERIES.—I. of the Gardens at the Crystal Palace, I asked to have it back, when I again flowered it. Knowing, as I then did, how successful Mr. A. Waterer was in cultivating the Lilium auratum in the open ground, and believing that to be the only way to grow these Lilies, with a view to reproduction, I was glad to have the opportunity of placing it under his care, and the result has been that, after many vicissitudes, the first authenticated Lily Hybrid has found a good home, where it will soon be grown in quantity sufficient to warrant its being offered to the public-a fit companion for the gorgeous Lilium Parkmanni. "With the introduction and flowering of Lilium auratum in 1862, we seem to have entered on a new era in the history of Lilies. The L. speciosum, till then the finest Lily known, became eclipsed by the greater beauty of L. auratum, which is now so extensively grown and so well known that little need be said of it, further than to mention that what was then predicted of it has been far more than realised, and instead of its growing 4 ft. high, with from four to five flowers on a stem, it has been grown 8 ft. to 10 ft. high, or even more, and in some instances single stems have borne fifty, sixty, or even seventy flowers. "Perhaps no plant has been imported into this country in greater quantities than this. Lily, which sufficiently shows the high estimation in which it has been held. I believe this fact also shows that for a long time its cultivation was misunderstood; indeed, I imagine that thousands are lost annually, because many growers will persist in drying-off the bulbs. Now, it is one thing to rest a plant, and quite another thing to dry it off, as it is called. I believe that the roots of Lilies are always active when in the ground, storing up nourishment for the following season. Therefore I consider that the bulbs should never be allowed to get dry, even when grown in pots. I maintain also that if larger pots are required, the bulbs should be repotted very soon after they have flowered-at any rate, before the stems are ripe enough to be cut off. "A good soil for Lilies consists of fibrous peat in a rough state, turfy loam, well rotted manure, and a good mixture of sharp sand. If grown in pots, these should be well drained. The bulbs should be placed rather deep, as the tendency is to produce roots on the stem above the bulb. the bulb. The best place for the pots during winter is on a bed of coal-ashes, and plunged in the same material. When they begin to grow in spring, they may be removed into a cold pit, or left in the same place, simply removing some of the ashes, to allow of their free growth. This treatment will not quite apply H to the L. auratum, for although these are said to be quite hardy, they are hardy only in the same sense and to the same degree as many very common plants, notably the common Brake, which is indeed quite hardy, but very often suffers from late spring frosts. It is therefore necessary, either in pot-culture or in the open air, to guard against spring frosts as soon as the young stems begin to appear above the soil.-G. THOMSON, Crystal Palace, Sydenham." THE REV. G. JEANS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF FLORISTS' FLOWERS.-IV. "ON my former letters, I have been occupied in the comparatively easy task of criticising the objections made by others. I now come to the more hazardous one of building up a system myself, and giving the objectors an opportunity of treating me as I have treated them; and in truth, I invite, or rather request, them to do so. That there is a scientific system at the bottom of the ordinary estimates of flowers, I have long been convinced; and if I do not succeed in developing it, the fault will be in these papers, which, therefore, I should wish to be found fault with, because there is now an ample sufficiency of facts accumulated for the science of Floriculture to be thence ascertained, and to take its place with other established systems. It is time for some one to do it, if I should fail. 66 "I proceed, therefore, to point out more particularly my view of the scientific principles on which the general agreement among florists, in what should be considered points of excellence in their flowers, is based. After which, I purpose to apply those principles to some of the flowers, as a specimen of what is required in all for an acknowledged standard, to be referred to both by growers and judges; premising, however, that I have not the arrogance to propose this essay as such a standard; nor could it be, for the principles themselves must first be sifted by criticism, both friendly and unfriendly, until some principles are established and recognised, and not till then can such a manual be compiled. But this may serve as a first attempt towards it, to attract others into the same path, in order to weed out what is unsound, to prune what is amiss, and to supply what is wanting. It will also serve to show that there are defined and certain boundaries, within which are confined respectively the province of science, within which there will always be agreement, and the province of taste, which admits of infinite diversity. "And I am pleased at seeing the increase of instances of persons conversant with the details of such matters, and who probably have not turned their attention to the modes by which their judgments have been influenced, feeling their way intelligibly and successfully to the very points which reasoning will demonstrate to be the true points of ideal excellence. Mr. Kendall has, in the FLORIST, [1849, p. 131] given us the properties of a good Cineraria; and as far as he has gone, if he had studied Aristotle and the Metaphysicians, he could not have done it better. His guide probably was the experience of a practised and interested eye. It will be the province of these Essays to show by reason that he is right in every particular. "The end proposed by the Creator in the arrangement and colours of the petals of a flower is that which is pleasant to the eye, and the two means by which this is produced are form and colour. "Form is available in two respects,—absolute, or direct, which is sought for its own sake, in that some forms are in their nature more a curve is more pleasing than others, as graceful than a straight line, and some curves than others; and relative, or indirect, which is subsidiary to some other purpose, in that some forms are better suited than others to set off colours to advantage, as a smooth petal exhibits its markings more perfectly than a wrinkled one can. "Colour is simply for its own sake; but it produces its effect in two ways—by contrast, as in painting light appears to be thrown upon any point by placing a shadow beside it; and by combination, as purple unites harmoniously with either of its constituent elements, red or blue, while green will hardly unite with any other. Combination, moreover, may take place in three ways; where each is preserved, as when one colour shades off imperceptibly into another; where distinctness begins to be lost by partial fusion, as in the clouded colours; and where the separate elements blend into an uniform new tint, as in the endless diversity of compound colours. "These are the few and elementary principles on which, with the latitude to be allowed for tastes, which will be defined hereafter, depends the effect of any flower in pleasing the eye. And it will be found that these principles are strictly scientific, and reducible to rules capable of application to each species of flower, so as to determine, in a great and ascertainable measure, the value of any variety of each species. "And in fact, it is because there is so much of scientific rule, founded in nature, in the large amount of agreement among them, pursuits of florists, that there has been that which we find to have obtained in a matter which is vulgarly believed to be a mere matter of individual taste and caprice. 66 "Form or shape is the figure contained by a |