44 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



tach themselves to the garden-trees of the forest, and bloom 

 profusely on their boles and boughs. The parched shores 

 of the Gulf of Bengal are covered during the spring with a 

 beautiful white Rose, found also in China and Nepaul ; 

 while in vast thickets of the beautiful Rosa sempervirens (a 

 native also of China) the tigers of Bengal and the crocodiles 

 of the Ganges are known to lie in wait for their prey. The 

 north-west of Asia, which has been called the fatherland of 

 the Rose, introduces to our notice the Rosa centifolia, the 

 most esteemed and renowned of all, with which the fair 

 Georgians and Circassians enhance their fairness. And yet 

 in the coldest regions — for nature is ever bountiful as 

 beautiful, and that merciful Power which makes the wheat 

 to grow everywhere for our food, sends also for our delec- 

 tation things pleasant to the eye— in Iceland (I wish to 

 confess honourably that I am still prigging from Boitard), 

 so infertile in vegetation that in some parts the natives are 

 compelled to feed their horses, sheep, and oxen on dried 

 fish, we find the Rosa rubiginosa, with its pale, solitary, cup- 

 shaped flowers ; and in Lapland, blooming almost under the 

 snows of that severe climate, the natives, seeking mosses 

 and lichens for their reindeer, find the Rosas majalis and 

 rubella, the former of which, brilliant in colour and of a 



