CHRYSANTHEMUMS have been known in Europe for fully two hundred years, yet they have been but recently "discovered," for as a familiar garden flower the history of the plant dates from the year 1843, when the first public exhibition of chrysanthemums was held in the ancient city of Norwich. Very soon thereafter followed the formation of the Stoke Newington Chrysanthemum Society, the first exhibition of which was held in the year 1846. This society may be regarded as the parent of a thousand, for although three years later in its birth than that at Norwich, it has served as the model for all similar societies, and as the school of chrysanthemum culture for the whole world. During a run of about forty years the village that has become so identified with this flower was better known to the floral world than any other suburb of London, for with the return of the chrysanthemum season Stoke Newington was "in everybody's mouth." Alas ! history will not keep to established grooves; this model society has become "National," and the flower, through the growth of its renown, has actually lost one of its most picturesque associations.

Pictorial art in China and Japan owes much of its life to the chrysanthemum and the paeony. These flowers are seen on their splendid pottery, and in the fantastic pictures of the native artists, in all possible degrees of naturalism and conventionalism, both flowers happily lending themselves to the invention that likes to make a toy of the truth. The chrysanthemum is in both countries a greater favourite than the paeony; and it must be confessed that, while we have derived from China and Japan the parents of our finest varieties and the types of the most distinctive forms, we are not the less indebted to them for the lessons that are the basis of our chrysanthemum cultivation. From the Chinese our gardeners have learned the art of producing specimen flowers of the most finished "incurved" form, such as the figure of Jardin des Plantes accompanying these remarks may suggest to the reader. For a fullsized specimen the size of the page does not suffice, for we are familiar with flowers that could not be put into a man's hat, so large are they.

The Chinese chrysanthemum was first accurately described by Breynius, in his "Prodromus," 1689, under the name of Matricaria Japonica maxima, and he states that six varieties were at that time in cultivation in Holland. It received its present botanical name of Chrysanthemum Indicum from Linnaeus, whose "Species Plantarum" first appeared in the year 1753. The first specimen known to have been grown in England was one that bore small yellow flowers, in the Botanic Garden, Chelsea, in the year 1764. It is interesting to be enabled to add that a dried specimen of this very plant was (with others) presented by the famous gardener at Chelsea, Philip Miller, to the Royal Society, and is now in the herbarium of the British Museum, in the series known as "Miller's Specimens." But this plant perished soon after the transfer of Miller's specimens; and it was not until the year 1789 that the true Chinese chrysanthemum obtained a place in Europe. In that year M.Blanchard, a merchant of Marseilles, imported three plants, the white, purple, and violet; but the purple only survived that expedition to become a garden flower. In the year following the Royal Gardens, Kew, obtained a specimen of this purple chrysanthemum; and thus the large-flowering chrysanthemum, the queen of autumnal flowers, obtained a home in this country. One hundred years have passed, and every year has seen something of importance added to its history, for from the first flowering of well-grown plants in Colville's nursery, at Chelsea, in the year 1795, it has been a subject of public interest and of increasing importance in the social circle. There are now over two thousand varieties named and registered, and hundreds of societies that especially recognise and encourage the cultivation. The number of these societies being ever increasing is an intimation that the chrysanthemum has not even yet reached the zenith of its fame.