1 82 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



of our catalogues were interesting, no doubt, to our fore- 

 fathers, and more intelligible, let us hope, than they are to 

 us. Let us believe that it was patent to their shrewder 

 sense why pink Roses were called Albas, and Roses whose 

 hues were white and lemon were described as Damask. 

 Let us suppose that they could distinguish at any distance 

 the Gallica from the Provence Rose, and that when they 

 heard the words Hybrid China, instead of being reminded, 

 as I am, of a cross between a Cochin and a Dorking fowl, 

 they recognised an infinity of distinctive attributes which 

 estrange that variety from the Hybrid Bourbon in the 

 most palpable and objective form. Though it may be 

 difficult for us to understand why the Persian Yellow, 

 brought to England from Persia by Sir H. Willock, should 

 have been promptly described as an Austrian Brier* — and 

 we are a trifle perplexed to comprehend whence the latter, 

 discovered first in Italy, derived its appellation — let us be 

 sure that it was all plain, and clear as the light, to them. 



But now that these summer Roses are no longer para- 

 mount — rapidly disappearing, on the contrary, before the 

 superior and more enduring beauty of those varieties which 



* The two Rose-Trees, it is true, are very similar in habit, but the nomencla- 

 ture is "just a muddle a'toogether." 



