70 PARSONS ON THE ROSE. 



The profuseness with which they were used among the 

 Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, and other ancient 

 nations in their religious solemnities, their public cere- 

 monies, and even in the ordinary customs of private life, 

 wo.uld lead us to suppose, and with some degree of cor- 

 rectness, that roses were very abundantly cultivated by 

 them all ; and we are inclined to think that their cultiva- 

 tion was then far more general than at the present time, 

 although the art of producing them was in its infancy. 

 However surprising in other respects may have been the 

 progress of the culture of roses within forty years, par- 

 ticularly in France, Holland, and Belgium, there can be 

 little doubt that, although the Romans were acquainted 

 with a much smaller number of varieties than the mod- 

 ems, yet flowers of those varieties were far more abund- 

 ant than the aggregate quantity of flowers of all the 

 varieties of roses cultivated at the present day. It can- 

 not be positively asserted that the Remontant Roses of 

 the present time were unknown at Rome, since the gar- 

 deners of that city practiced sowing the seeds of the Rose, 

 by which mode many of the most remarkable varieties of 

 that class have been obtained by modern cultivators. The 

 Romans, however, preferred to propagate by cuttings, 

 which produced flowering plants much sooner than those 

 from the seed. 



But, though the Romans may have had roses of the 

 same species with some of those which we now cultivate, 

 it is scarcely probable that these species could have con- 

 tinued until this period, and escaped the devastation at- 

 tendant on the revolutions of empire, or the more deso- 

 lating invasions of the Huns and Goths. Thus it is, that 

 those roses of Paestum, to which allusion is so frequently 

 made by ancient writers, and which, according to Yirgil 

 and Pliny, bloomed semi-annually, and were common in 

 the gardens of that city, are not now to be found. Jussieu 

 and Loudresse, two French gentlemen, successively visit- 



