INTRODUCTION. 
A Genus more remarkable than the Rose could scarcely 
have been selected for illustration from the whole 
vegetable kingdom: on account of the lively interest 
its beauty has excited in the minds of mankind from 
the earliest ages of the world. To poets it is a mine 
which all their ingenuity has been insufficient to ex- 
haust. Volumes have been written upon its efficacy in 
Medicine; and one of the most earnest defenders of 
its powers has not hesitated to assure the world that 
the Pharmacopeia should be formed of Roses alone. 
It would be equally needless and tedious to mention all 
the stories which have been told about them; or all the 
customs to which they have given rise. But it would 
scarcely be judicious to pass these things over without 
any sort of notice. 
As the emblem of youth, the Rose was dedicated 
to Aurora; of love and beauty, to Venus; of danger 
and fugacity, to Cupid. It was given by the latter as 
a bribe to Harpocrates the god of silence; whence 
perhaps originated the custom, of which we are told by 
Rosenbergius, that obtained among the northern na- 
tions of Europe, of suspending a Rose from the ceiling, 
over the upper end of their tables, when it was intended 
that what passed at their entertainments should be se- 
cret, And this undoubtedly is the origin of the com- 
