this scentless (but
triumphant) beauty; everybody who beheld the Phoebus begged for a plant
or a cutting; and we, generous in our ostentation, willing to redeem
the vice by the virtue, promised as many plants and cuttings as we could
reasonably imagine the root might be made to produce*--perhaps rather
more; and half the dahlia growers round rejoiced over the glories of the
gorgeous flower, and speculated, as the wont is now, upon seedling after
seedling to the twentieth generation.

* It is wonderful how many plants may, by dint of forcing,
and cutting and forcing again, be extracted from one root.
But the experiment is not always safe. Nature sometimes
avenges herself for the encroachments of art, by weakening
the progeny. The Napoleon Dahlia, for instance, the finest
of last year's seedlings, being over-propagated, this season
has hardly produced one perfect bloom, even in the hands of
the most skilful cultivators.

Alas for the vanity of human expectations! February came, the
twenty-second of February, the very St. Valentine of dahlias, when
the roots which have been buried in the ground during the winter are
disinterred, and placed in a hotbed to put forth their first shoots
previous to the grand operations of potting and dividing them. Of course
the first object of search in the choicest corner of the nicely labelled
hoard, was the Phoebus: but no Phoebus was forthcoming; root and label
had vanished bodily! There was, to be sure, a dahlia without a label,
which we would gladly have transformed into the missing treasure; but as
we speedily discovered a label without a dahlia, it was but too obvious
that they belonged to each other. Until last year we might have had
plenty of the consolation which results from such divorces of the
name from the thing; for our labels, sometimes written upon parchment,
sometimes upon leather, sometimes upon wood, as each material happened
to be recommended by gardening authorities, and fastened on with
packthread, or whip-cord, or silk twist, had generally parted company
from the roots, and frequently become utterly illegible, producing a
state of confusion which most undoubtedly we never expected to regret:
but this year we had followed the one perfect system of labels of
unglazed china, highly varnished after writing on them, and fastened on
by wire; and it had answered so completely, that one, and one only, had
broken from its moorings. No