104 THE GARDENER. [March 



that they are as capable of climbing as Jack's Bean-stalk, and that 

 they produce more beautiful Hoses tlian tlie other nomad or wander- 

 ing tribes. These are the Ayrshire, the Evergreen, the Banksian, the 

 Boursault, the IMultiflora, and the Hybrid Climbing. 



The Ayrshire and Evergreen Roses — it should be, Evergreen if the 

 iceatlier permit — have many claims upon our grateful admiration. If 

 we have an ugly, red-faced, staring wall, which seems to glory in its 

 ugliness, they will hide its deformities more quickly than any other 

 Rose or any other creeper with which I have acquaintance. Only 

 give them a good start, as you give an Irishman "jist a hint" of 

 whisky before you send him on an errand ; and, however adverse the 

 position or the aspect, off they go like lamplighters. With their 

 shining leaves, and their pretty clusters of white pink-tinted flowers, 

 they will flourish where no others can grow — in the waste places of 

 the earth, in damp dismal corners, under trees and up them, if you 

 wish. Upon the blank wall of two new rooms, having a western 

 aspect, I planted Rampant sempervirens. Owing to the proximity of 

 another w^all and of intermediate shrubs, he was not even gladdened 

 occasionally with a few kindly smiles from the setting sun ; and though 

 I gave him plentifully good soil and good manure, I left him hoping 

 against hojje. The first year he did little. I thought he was dying 

 in his dreary dungeon, but he was only planning his escape ; and out 

 he bolted the next summer, making shoots like salmon-rods, some 

 more than 20 feet long. "Rampant" must have had adult-baptism, 

 and was well named by his sponsors, always reminding one of a 

 Lancashire anecdote, how a poor client waited upon one Lawyer 

 Cheek of Manchester, with a long bill in his hand, and sighed, 

 as he put down the brass on the table, " They dunna call thee 

 Cheek for nought/' 



Other members of these two families are alike successful in sur- 

 mounting hardships — ej/., among the Ayrshires, Dundee Rambler, 

 Queen of Belgians, Ruga (with its faint odour of the ancestral Tea, 

 which intermarried, it is said, with the Roses of Ayr), and Thoresbyana 

 — raised a few miles from my home at Thoresby, the seat of Earl 

 Manvers, where fruits and flowers have the skilful care of a gard- 

 ener (Mr Henderson) who deserves the name ; and among the Ever- 

 greens, Adelaide d'Orleans, Felicite Perpetuelle (who would not desire 

 to have this Rose upon his house — this 



" Kose lookiug in at the window, 

 And chasing dark sorrow away," 



as it is written in one of the most touching and most teaching of our 

 ballads ?), Myrianthes, and the two Princesses, Marie and Louise. 



