THE FLORAL WORLD 



AND 



GARDEN GUIDE 



AUaUST, 1868 



EOSES IN 1868. 



[VERY rose has its season, and every season Las its 

 character in respect of roses, and there is as much enter- 

 tainment for the lover of roses in observing the broad 

 generalities of climatal influence as in minutely com- 

 paring and criticising the characters of individual 

 flowers. Various as have been the features of past seasons in which 

 we have reported on the behaviour of roses, we have never before 

 had to record the experiences of a season like the present, in which 

 the heat and drought of the oriental desert has been seasoned with 

 mosquitoes from the West Indies, and fires like those of the Ameri- 

 can prairies. The winter of 1867-68 bad all the characteristics of a 

 dry spring. The temperature was high, frost occurred rarely, the 

 rainfall in the London district was about one and a half inches less 

 than the average, and in western parts the deficiency was greater. 

 The months of April and May were not favourable to roses, the 

 temperature was too higli, and there was not sufficient rain. June 

 was hot, with little rain, and the bloom of the rose was beyond pre- 

 cedent early, and, generally speaking, the flowers were thin. Special 

 exhibitions of roses were all too late to catch the flower?, but as the 

 Crystal Palace rose show was the first, so it proved to be the best ; 

 and even on the 20th of June, when that display took place, many 

 experienced exhibitors made but a sorry figure, for their flowers 

 were on the wane, and the best they could cut scarcely kept together 

 long enough to pass the ordeal of the preliminary judging. The 

 Eoyal Horticultural Society's rose show, which immediately suc- 

 ceeded, was almost a failure, while the meetings at Birmingham, 

 Stamford, and Hereford were in many respects deficient of the 

 attractions by which they have been characterized in former years, 

 Generally speaking, the successes of exhibitors have been in the 

 direct ratio of their advantages in respect of soil. The deep, heavy, 

 nutritious loam of Cheshunt enabled Messrs. Paul and Son to take 

 the lead in large collections, in almost every case in which they com- 

 peted ; and even at the Leicester meeting, on the IGth of July, they 



VOL. III. — NO. Till. 15 



