HOW TO SHOW THE ROSE. 24 1 



Sometimes the flowers were crowded together, sometimes 

 they were lonely, neighbourless, like the snipes, in " wisps," 

 and solitary ; sometimes they appeared without foliage (at 

 one of our provincial shows it was strictly prohibited, and I 

 asked the committee what they meant by coming on the 

 ground with whiskers) ; and sometimes they peeped out of 

 leafy bowers — " plenty of covert, but very little game," as a 

 witty Lincolnshire lord remarked to the clergyman, who 

 asked him, one Christmas morning, what he thought of the 

 decorations of a church in which the evergreens were many 

 and the worshippers few. 



At our first National Rose-Show we commenced a reform 

 of these incongruities, and soon afterwards disannulled 

 them by an act of uniformity as to size and shape. The 

 amateur must therefore order his boxes, which any carpen- 

 ter can make for him from three-quarter-inch deal, to be of 

 the following dimensions : — 



Length. Breadth. Height. 



For 24 Roses, 4 feet. I foot 6 inches. Back of box 6]4. inches, front 4_^. 



55 lo j> 3 J' »' " " 



,, 12 ,, 2 ,, 2 in. ,, ,, ,, 



,, 6 ,, I foot 6 in. ,, „ ,, 



The covers, being seven inches in depth at the back, and 

 five inches in front, being one and a half inch longer and 



Q 



