190 SELECTIONS. 



Avoca. Madame Ravary. 



Duchess of Wellington. Queen of Spain. 



George C. Waud. Richmond. 



George Dickson. W. E. Lippiatt. 



T.s. f 



Auguste Comte. Innocente Pirola. 



Bridesmaid. Madame de Watteville. 



Cleopatra. Marie Van Houtte. 



Fran9ois Dubreuil. Muriel Grahame. 



Golden Gate. Rubens. 



Hon. Edith Gifford. The Bride. 



With me the exhibition box will always come first, 

 but the vase and the basket have to-day to be con- 

 sidered, as also the decorative classes which embrace 

 so wide a range of varieties. 



For a vase almost any exhibition Rose will do, 

 but as far as possible it is wisest to avoid all those 

 varieties that need much wiring. A good upright Rose 

 such as Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt is better than a 

 Bessie Brown, and presents less difficulty in the 

 staging. The same applies to all exhibits shown 

 in baskets; this is easily seen if the grower will com- 

 pare an exhibit of Ophelia with any other variety of 

 a less erect nature. One of the greatest values of 

 any variety lies in its utility for vase decoration. A 

 bowl of Roses as a rule is a very hard thing to arrange 

 by reason of the great majority having such weak 

 stems. In the purely decorative classes found at ex- 

 hibitions a large number of Roses are exhibited that 

 take a great time to wire up and arrange, and they 

 hardly represent their natural appearance as found 

 growing in the garden. To my mind there is far too 

 wide a range of varieties allowed by the N.R.S. to 

 be shown in this section, and it is at all times a most 

 difficult one to judge. Why Roses like Lady Hilling- 

 don, Lady Pirrie, Mme. Ravary, Mrs. Alfred Tate, 

 Mrs. E. G. Hill, Mrs. Herbert Stevens, Richmond, and 

 many others of like character should be included in 

 the decorative classes, has always been a mystery to 



