100 THE GARDENER. [March 



will do its work with little grooming and scanty fare, it well repays 

 that generous diet which I have previously prescribed. In pruning, take 

 away all weakly wood, and you may then deal with the strong as you 

 please. If you want to increase the height of your tree, " cut boldly," 

 said the Augur, and low. If you desire short flowering laterals, you 

 may have them, a dozen on a shoot, 



I am inclined to award to Climbing Devoniensis the second prize in 

 its class. To this offspring of, or, as we technically term it, " sport " 

 from, the lovely Tea-scented Rose, Devoniensis, we may truly say, 



O matre pulchra 

 Filia pulchrior ! 



for it has all the beauty of the mother, form, complexion, sweetness, 

 without that tendency to rapid decline which the parent exhibits in 

 our chilly climate. A tree kindly sent to me by Mr Curtis, of the 

 Devon I^ursery, Torquay, made shoots 1 feet in length the first 

 summer after planting, and now covers a large space on a wall 18 feet 

 high. It blooms here even earlier than Gloire de Dijon, and I 

 gathered perfect flowers from it during the month of November last. 



Keep a sharp look-out, when pruning, for wood diseased or de- 

 cayed, because, although the Rose gave ample proof of its hardihood 

 by surviving the trying winter and spring of 1866-7, the ends of its 

 shoots and its young laterals are liable to be injured by frost ; and all 

 crippled limbs and unhealthy flesh should, of course, be amputated. 



There are two Roses, I am well aware — two sisters of this same 

 "most divinely tall" family — more beautiful than those which I have 

 preferred before them. When we held our third National Rose Show 

 in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, the first of those exhibitions 

 which have since been so popular in that grand creation of a garden- 

 er's genius, I remember that some of us were made almost angry by 

 the excessive share of admiration received by one of these Roses. An 

 anxious eager crowd jumped and jostled to get a view of it, reckless 

 of each other's corns. I heard a remark from one visitor to another, 

 a short man behind him, who seemed, I must say, about to clamber 

 up the speaker's back, — "Pardon me, sir, but may I remind you that 

 we are not playing at leap-frog?" What were they all struggling to see 1 

 There were long lines of lovely Roses — why this pressure always at this 

 special spot ? It was just as when, in our Royal Academy, and on the 

 first days of exhibition, the visitors all make for one particular corner, 

 because there hangs, so the ' Times ' has told them, the picture of the 

 year. And what was fJie Rose ? It was Cloth of Gold Noisette — a 

 box of it, sent by Mr W. Cant, from the neighbourhood of Colchester. 

 Well, the most jealous could not dispute its supreme beauty. It was 



