244 THE GARDENER. [June 



growing freely on tlie Brier with liberal treatment and moderate prun- 

 ing. They are affiliated in the catalogues to the family of Gallicas. 

 But what are Gallicas 1 



"Gallica," responds the intelligent schoolboy, "is a Latin adjective, 

 feminine gender, and signifying French." But can the intelligent 

 schoolboy, or the still more intelligent adult, inform us why the Latin 

 for French should be applied to this particular section only of the 

 multitudinous Roses sent to us from France? "They who send," it 

 may be answered, " make a special claim, for they call them ' Rosiers 

 de Provins,' and Provins surely is in France, department Seine-et- 

 Marne." Yes ! but with every grateful recognition of the debt which 

 we owe to French rosarians, it is well known that in this instance 

 the claim cannot be proved. The birthplace of the Rose called Gallica 

 is unknown, disputed, like the birthplace of Homer. "It is from 

 Asia," says one ; " it is the Rose of Miletus, mentioned by Pliny." 

 "It was first found," writes a second, "upon Italian soil." "It came 

 from Holland," cries Tertius, "beyond a doubt, and Van Eden was the 

 man who introduced it." 



But I have asked this question with an ulterior view. It is time, I 

 think, for some alterations in the nomenclature and classification of 

 the Rose. When summer Roses — Roses, that is, which bloom but once 

 — were almost the only varieties grown, and when hybridisers found 

 a splendid market for novelties in any quantities, new always, and 

 distinct in name, the subdivisions yet remaining in our catalogues 

 were interesting, no doubt, to our forefathers, and more intelligible, let 

 us hope, than they are to us. Let us believe that it was patent to 

 their shrewder sense why pink Roses were called Albas, and Roses 

 whose hues were white and lemon were described as Damask. Let us 

 suppose that they could distinguish at any distance the Gallica from the 

 Provence Rose, and that when they heard the words Hybrid China, 

 instead of being reminded, as I am, of a cross between a Cochin and 

 a Dorking fowl, they recognised an infinity of distinctive attributes 

 which estrange that variety from the Hybrid Bourbon in the most 

 palpable and objective form. Though it may be difficult for us to 

 understand why the Persian Yellow, brought to England from Persia 

 by Sir H. Willock, should have been promptly described as an Austrian 

 Brier — and we are a trifle perplexed to comprehend whence the latter, 

 discovered first in Italy, derived its appellation — let us be sure that it 

 was all plain, and clear as the light, to them. 



But now that these summer Roses are no longer paramount — rapidly 

 disappearing, on the contrary, before the superior and more enduring 

 beauty of those varieties which bloom in summer and autumn too ; 

 now that several divisions formerly recognised are gone from the cata- 



