96 DESCRIPTION OF THE ROSE. 



plants thus obtained he again chooses the best, and re- 

 peats with them the same process. Thus the rose and 

 other plants are brought slowly to their perfect develop- 

 ment. It is in vain to look for much improvement by mere- 

 ly cultivating one individual. Culture alone will not make 

 a single rose double, or a dull rose brilliant. We cultivate 

 the parent, and look for our reward in the offspring. 



The village maiden has a beauty and a charm of her 

 own ; and so has her counterpart in the floral world, the 

 wild rose that grows by the roadside. Transplanted to 

 the garden, and, with its offspring after it to the fourth 

 and fifth generation, made an object of skilful culture, it 

 reaches at last a wonderful development. The flowers 

 which in the ancestress were single and small become 

 double in the offspring, and expand their countless petals 

 to the sun in all the majesty of the Queen of Flowers. 

 The village maid has risen to regal state. She has lost 

 her native virgin charm; but she sits throned and crowned 

 in imperial beauty. 



Now, all the roses of our gardens have some wild an- 

 cestress of the woods and meadows, from whom, in the 

 process of successive generations, their beauties have been 

 developed, sometimes by happy accidents, but oftener by 

 design. Thus have arisen families of roses, eact marked 



