230 THE BOOK OF THE ROSE CHAP. 
_had to contend. Being a plucky man of resource, 
he resolved on an unusual experiment ; he uncovered 
the boxes, and set them to stand for a considerable 
time in the full glare of the sun. Whether the 
others took him for a lunatic or an ignorant novice 
I do not know; but I do know that he brought me 
back the first prize. 
In several of the handbooks of instruction on how 
to show Roses the exhibitor is warned to be careful 
how he arranges them as to colour for general effect. 
Of course this is worth doing, if it means arranging 
all the best blooms thus, but under no circum- 
stances should alight or dark bloom be introduced 
for the sake of colour if it is not worthy in itself. I 
am bound to say that it is very rarely that judges 
pay any heed to the arrangement: they look at the 
merits of the blooms themselves, and a preponder- 
ance of dark over light flowers or vice versé would 
have usually no effect with them. Successful 
arrangement is only taken into consideration where 
rival stands are very nearly equal in the merits of 
the individual blooms. 
There will seldom be any need to look over the 
stand at the last to see if there are any duplicates, » 
z.e. two of the same sort, if care has been exercised 
in this respect from the beginning, and no Rose is 
introduced without being sure about it. But a 
bloom may sometimes be accidentally changed 
without altering the label, so these should be run 
over to see that they are right. The National Rose 
Society authorities are lenient in this matter, 
provided there be no duplicates, but country judges 
are sometimes more strict. 
There is room for a good deal of legitimate 
