230 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



have still to provide, if you will follow my directions, some 

 500 stocks, to receive those buds in July. These stocks, 

 like the Rose-trees, should be planted in November ; but 

 what are these stocks to be .'' 



-^sop told the gardener of his master, Xanthus, that j 



"the earth was a stepmother to those plants which were ' 



incorporated into her soil, but a mother to those which are , 



her own free production ;" and wherever the Dog -Rose 



flourishes in our hedgerow^s — now delighting our eyes with 



i 



its flowers, and now scratching them out with its thorns, 

 should we follow the partridge or the fox too wildly — tJiere 

 the Brier is the stock for the Rose. I know that, despite the 

 dictum of yEsop, our soil has been no injiista noverca to that 1 



foreign Rose, which took the name of Manetti from him i 



who raised it from seed, and which was sent to Mr Rivers, ; 



more than thirty years since, by Signor Crivelli, from I 



Como. I know that the Italian refugee is acclimatised, 

 and that in hundreds of our gardens he is a welcome and 

 honoured guest. I know that the Manetti will grow luxu- 

 riantly where the Brier will not grow at all ; that in a 

 toward season it will produce some varieties of the Rose 

 in their most perfect form, those especially which have the 

 smoother wood ; that in many cases the Rose-trees budded 



