170 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



of the rose grower will not cease to be indulged in, because those who 

 love the Queen of Flowers, would not let the summer pass without doing 

 her the homage of apilgrimage to Sawbridgeworth, and Cheshunt, and Berk- 

 hampstead, and Slough, and Hereford, and Maresfield, and to such other 

 spots as lie most within their range of journeying. But the absolute 

 necessity for a rose-tour is now at an end ; the leading nurseries in the 

 country will annually pour their wealth of rose-blooms into St. James's 

 Hall, and in less than an hour, the accustomed eye may arrive at decisions, 

 which previously required weeks of persevering plodding from place to 

 place, and was then not so satisfactory as a comparison at an exhibition, 

 because the subjects of comparison were separated, by both distance and 

 time, in the mind of the amateur. On the day of the Rose Show, the 

 visitor could not only compare one rose with another, but the same rose 

 with itself, as produced in different districts, and under various degrees of 

 horticultural skill, so that old and new, good, bad, and indifferent, coidd 

 be at once assigned to their proper place in the scale of relative merit. 



This exhibition serves a yet more important purpose ; it gives the key 

 to the rose catalogues — those enigmas of horticultural literature, which 

 have bewildered and confounded many a grower, to his serious loss. It 

 may be fairly concluded that at least one half of the roses in cultivation, 

 and occupying a place in catalogues, where their failings are not very 

 minutely registered, may be got rid of, at once, and for ever, to the pei'- 

 manent profit of the amateur, and the good of the rose itself, as a subject 

 of culture. The single, loose petalled, shapeless, and evanescent roses of 

 our ancestors, have been pretty well swept away by the march of improve- 

 ment ; it now comes to the turn of many that have borne an adventitious 

 fame in our own day, and are still classed with things of high excellence, 

 to give place to subjects of proved merit. Yet more severely must the 

 catalogues be thinned of these questionable beauties, and the amateur no 

 longer deluded into the purchase, and the patient culture, of sorts that 

 are incapable of making him a fair return. We have only to sustain this 

 exhibition as it deserves to be sustained, to secure not only an annual 

 Feast of Roses, in itself worth the cost, but also a fair field of competition, 

 in which merit is sure to triumph. 



The committee of the National Rose Show deserve the highest praise for 

 the admirable arrangements made, both for the convenience of exhibiters and 

 visiters ; and the awards of the judges have, we understand, given the most 

 perfect satisfaction. Some sixty of the most eminent rose growers entered 

 the lists, and the display was in every sense complete, excepting that no plants 

 were showiV'the entire display consisting of cut flowers. The beautiful hall was, 

 perhaps, never so fragrant before, not even wdien filled with roses of another 

 growth, bearing about, them the choicest preparations of the perfumer. The 

 flowers were displayed on three tables, running the length of the hall ; and 

 encircling the platform in front of the organ, was a semi-circular table covered 

 with a collection from Mr. Rivers, of Sawbridgeworth, and as the central 

 tabic cut this semi-circle in half, so that it was impossible to view the collection 

 in its entirety, it must be set down as one of the mistakes for which the florists 

 are responsible. Mr. Rivers's roses were not entered for competition, so that 

 among the nurserymen, the competition was principally confined to Messrs. 

 Paul, Cranston, Veitch, Turner, Francis, Hollamby and Cant. Mr. Lane was 

 unable to compete, owing to the heat and drought. Among the amateurs, the 



