Then came the panic. The bottom dropped out of the bucket of bulbs. The government forbade the gambling, and between suns the price of an offshoot of the “Semper Augustus” dropped to fifty florins, or approximately twenty-two dollars. After a century of quiet, somebody started a short-lived palpitation in hyacinths, but the highest price paid for a single hyacinth bulb was not more than $800. To-day the Dutch make more of a serious business of bulb raising, and the rather inconspicuous offshoot has become a recognized article of trade and commerce. Almost all of the 2,000 Dutch varieties of tulips have been developed by patient and thoughtful culture from the _Tulipa Gesneriana_, which Conrad Gesner purchased in Constantinople and brought to Augsburg in Germany in 1559. In Holland the tulip is propagated both from the seed and from the offshoots of the bulb. The offshoots may be expected to reproduce their true variety as to colorings and markings, growing to a flowering size in three or four years. Seedlings, on the other hand, are less vain and more reticent. No matter what the complexions of their parents might have been, the first flowers of a seedling, appearing after it has had four or five years’ growth, are of a single color. A tulip in such a state is called a “breeder,” and remains so until, after several years, its flower suddenly “breaks” into the gorgeous colors of the “flamed” or the “feathered” tulip. It is then classified according to color and variety and placed upon the market. To hasten this period of “breaking” in the career of the tulip--for no man can compute with any degree of certainty the year in which it will take place--the growers resort to various means, even sending the bulbs away sometimes for a change of climate. “Breeders” that have taken on the desired markings and colors are said to have become “rectified.” But the problem of chance that the seedling tulips will “break” into a new variety is one that the Dutch have been pondering over for centuries, and, as has already been said, they have been rewarded to the extent of 2,000 varieties. Much care is devoted to the preparation of the soil and, after fertilizing thoroughly, the grower will first plant it with potatoes for a couple of years in order to diminish its strength and adapt it better to the cultivation of tulips. The bulbs are taken up each summer, their offshoots detached, and then replaced in fresh soil. [Illustration: Inside the Groote Kerk in Haarlem, showing its organ, which was long considered one of the greatest in the world]