HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



129 



Turkey. The dog rose {R. catiina), as we know, 

 wanders at its own sweet will over our hedges and 

 undergrowth of woods, and in France and Italy, 

 R. Gallica is found in the same situations. But al- 

 though there are a few wild, or semi-wild kinds, in 

 its full beauty the rose is essentially a flower of 

 cultivation. In that state it is still most valuable 

 to the botanist as affording examples of metamor- 

 phosis, and showing the analogy of parts, for in some 

 cultivated roses are to be seen how carpels and 

 stamens have become petals ; and in others how 

 sepals and carpels have been transformed into true 

 leaves. 



If the date of the introduction of the rose to the 

 garden is lost, poets are quite certain as to the origin 

 and destination of the first one. They tell us that 

 it sprang from the blood of Adonis, and was given 

 by Cupid to Harpocrates to induce him not to reveal 

 the doings of Venus, and_ to this tradition some 

 ascribe the old custom of suspending a rose over the 

 table at convivial meetings, as a hint that all there 

 said and done was not to be spoken of out-of-doors. 

 The moss rose we owe to Cupid, for Venus having 

 begged her son to make her favourite flower 

 still more beautiful, he sportively flung around it a 

 handful of moss taken from the bank on which they 

 rested. Again, there is a pretty fable that the rose 

 was once a lovely woman, whose charms were so 

 great that people gazing on her forgot to worship 

 elsewhere, and the temple of Diana became deserted. 

 The irate goddess called Apollo to her aid, and he, 

 indignant at a slight shown to his sister, transformed 

 the beautiful Rhodanthe to a rose-tree. The admiring: 

 crowds, who adored at a distance, were changed to 

 thorns, whilst the more deeply smitten still fluttered 

 around their divinity as butterflies. 



The Romans valued most the roses of Capua and 

 Proeneste, with which they decorated their rooms 

 (Cleopatra had a carpet of roses prepared for Antony 

 at one of her festivals) and ornamented their dishes 

 by sprinkling the juice over or covering them with 

 the petals. The flowers they wove into chaplets and 

 perfumed the clothes of their guests with rose-water 

 — a practice still continued in India at weddings — 

 and Nero is said to have spent ;^20,ooo on roses 

 for one of his suppers. Pliny also speaks of the 

 ashes of burnt roses being used to trim the eyebrows. 

 Gerarde says that rose petals were sometimes eaten 

 as a salad with pepper, vinegar, and oil ; and a 

 preserve used to be made of the "hips" of the 

 dog rose. Both Greeks and Romans made an oint- 

 ment from the leaves and flowers for dressing wounds, 

 whilst syrups, infusions, and confections were given 

 for nearly all the ills that mortal flesh is heir to, 

 and kept their place in pharmacy for many ages. 

 Culpeper says that to write of all the virtues of the 

 various preparations of the rose would fill a volume, 

 yet he prefaces his chapter with the peevish exclama- 

 tion, " What a pother have authors made with roses ! 



What a racket have they kept!" The ripe fruits 

 of the dog rose {R. canitia), the dried and fresh 

 unexpanded petals of the red rose {R. Gallica), and 

 the fresh expanded petals of the cabbage rose (R. 

 ccntifolia), still figure in the British Pharmacopoeia. 

 Professor Bentley, in " Medicinal Plants," says that 

 R. ccntifolia "is grown at Mitcham, Fulham, &c., 

 in small quantity, the great cultivation being carried 

 on at the flower-farms in the south of France." 

 R. Gallica is grown near Mitcham, in Surrey, Oxford- 

 shire and Derbyshire ; in places in Holland and near 

 Paris, and he states "that it has been computed 

 that 2000 flower-buds of R. Gallica yields about 10 

 pounds of dried, or 100 pounds of fresh petals." 

 The pharmaceutical preparations of roses are mildly 

 astringent, and are not much depended upon as 

 therapeutic agents, their chief use being to serve 

 as vehicles for more active drugs. The R. Dainascena 

 is the Si^ecies that is chiefly cultivated for perfumery 

 purposes, and at a distance of seven miles from 

 Ghazepoor, India, where they are largely grown, 

 the odour can be distinguished. The quality of 

 otto of roses seems to depend more upon the climate 

 of the country in which the flowers grow than upon 

 any one particular species. The roses, with or with- 

 out their calyces, are distilled with water. The 

 product is allowed to stand at a certain temperature 

 for a day or two, when the oil (otto) that rises to 

 the surface is skimmed off. It is often much adulte- 

 rated with " oil of geranium." To purify the mosque 

 of Omar in Jerusalem, after the departure of the 

 Christians, Saladin used five hundred camel-loads of 

 rose-water. Estates have often been held by the 

 tenure of a rose — a red one — at times being stipulated 

 for, and these floral tributes generally had to be paid 

 on St. John the Baptist's Day. For the castle of 

 High Head, held by Lord Brougham in capite of 

 the Queen, a red rose had to be given every year 

 at Carlisle, and the manors of Blakenhall, Buerton, 

 Bebington, Doddington, and Seddington in Cheshire, 

 were respectively held by the families of Venables, 

 Poole, Bebington, Delves, and Fytton by such 

 tenures. When these estates changed hands by 

 puixhase or otherwise, the payment of the rose 

 devolved on the actual holder of the land, thus : the 

 above manor ^of Bebington passed by marriage to 

 the Minshulls of Minshull in 1478, and in 1585 

 Richard de Minshull was then holding it "in socage 

 by red rose to be rendered on St. John the Baptist's 

 Day." In 1569 the quarry at Shrewsbury was leased 

 by the corporation, for a red rose yearly, to a person 

 who also engaged to bring the water from Brodwell, 

 near Crou-Meole. For Brook House, Langsett, 

 Yorkshire, it is said that a rose had to be provided 

 at Christmas, and a snowball at Midsummer, and as 

 evidently there would often thus be much difficulty 

 in paying the rent, we are probably correct in sur- 

 mising that in this case a money fine was the 

 alternative. 



