xI EXHIBITING 209 
show them the best. A large advantage is held, as 
it is, by those who are gifted in the power of display, 
especially in Tea Roses, but if all the merit were in 
the showing there would be small encouragement 
for the cultivator in his yearly round of work. 
And also that as the judging must be accurate and 
by strict rule, so only those formal styles of beauty 
which can be judged by rule can be held admissible. 
It is very unsatisfactory to enter into any competi- 
tion where you do not know precisely by what rules 
you will be judged. 
Thus the charge against Rose shows are that they 
encourage size and formal beauty, and care nothing 
for fragrance or artistic elegance. Even if these 
accusations were unanswerable, which I do not 
think they are, it must be considered whether 
exhibitions have not done very much for raising 
the popularity of the Rose, for the increase of 
varieties not only of show sorts but of every descrip- 
tion, and for making England the true home and 
centre of the national flower ? 
The large and rapid growth of the trade since 
Rose shows were established would be sufficient 
answer to these questions. Where ten Roses were 
at that time raised by nurserymen and grown by 
amateurs, a thousand would now be a more likely 
figure : and whereas such a thing as making a living 
out of raising Roses alone had not then been 
heard of in England, and the number of Rose nursery- 
men of note might be counted on the fingers, there 
are now and have been for several years three large 
and flourishing establishments for the growing of 
Roses in one English town, two of which devote 
themselves solely to this object. 
P 
