246 ROSACEvE 



garden hedgerows, and it is thus used extensively in Australia. "One of 

 the most charming peculiarities of the cultivated scenery of Tasmania," says 

 Colonel Mundy, " is the Sweet-Briar hedges. To-day we were driving nearly 

 the whole distance between them. In a groat many places they were ten or 

 twelve feet high, and the same in width, spangled all over, and scenting the 

 air with fifty thousand delicate little roses. I noticed one or two thickets of 

 this plant, which must have been forty or fifty feet in diameter-, and twelve in 

 height." This writer remarks, that about Hobart Town, both in the town- 

 gardens and country enclosures, the delicate scent of these Roses absolutely 

 monopolizes the air as a vehicle for its peculiar perfume ; the closely-clipped 

 mint borders, which in these gardens sometimes supply the place of box, 

 however, overpower even the Sweet-Briar, as well as every other scent of 

 the garden. 



This Rose was introduced by the colonists, for although Roses are to be 

 found in almost every country of the Northern Hemisphere, both in the Old 

 and New World, from Sweden to the North of Africa ; from Kamschatka to 

 Bengal, and from. Hudson's Bay to the mountains of Mexico, yet neither in 

 Australia nor in South America is there any native Rose. 



Our Sweet-Briar has bright green foliage, and its flowers are of deeper 

 pink than most of our wild Roses. They expand in June and July. It is the 

 Eglantine of the old poets. Chaucer calls it Eglantere : — 



" Where she sate in a fresh greene laurey-tree, 

 On that further side even right by me, 

 That gave so passing a delicious smell, 

 According to the Eglantere full well." 



Milton, who speaks of the "Twisted Eglantine," evidently refers to the 



woodbine or honeysuckle, but this was probably a mistake of the poet, as 



that flower does not seem ever to have been so called. Shakspere alludes 



to the sweetness of the leaf of the Eglantine ; and Spenser, referring to the 



Sweet-Briar, says : — 



"Sweet is the Rose, but grows upon a breere, 

 Sweet is the Eglantine that pricketh neere." 



It seems always to have been a favourite flower, and is often alluded to in 

 old works. In the "Queen-like Closet," or "Rich Cabinet," by Hannah 

 Woolley, published in 1681, we find various directions for adorning houses 

 with this and other flowers, and are told how to " dress up a chimney very 

 fine for the summer," when a packthread dipped in bees'- wax and rosin, and 

 fastened to the inner part of the chimney, was to be stuck all over with green 

 moss and orpine flowers, and Sweet-Briar flowers, and sprigs were to be stuck 

 on as if they grew. The orpine sprigs, this lady tells her readers, will grow 

 for two months, and the Briar is to be renewed once a-week, but the moss 

 will last all the summer. 



12. Slightly-scented Briar {R. inoddra). — Prickles uniform and curved; 

 leaflets doubly serrated, hairy, glandular beneath ; sepals pinnate, rarely 

 remaining attached to the fruit, which is oval, or nearly globular. The 

 odour of the shrub is much like that of the Sweet-Briar, but fainter. A 

 variety occurs in which the calyx is much larger, and remains on the ripened 



