OUR QUEEN OF BEAUTY. 43 



with wine, myrtle, and oil. It is found in every 

 quarter of the globe — on glaciers, in deserts, on 

 mountains, in marshes, in forests, in valleys, and 

 on plains. The Esquimaux, as Boitard tells us in 

 his interesting Monographie de la Rose^ adorn 

 their hair and their raiment of deer and seal skin 

 with the beautiful blossoms of the Rosa nitida, 

 which grows abundantly under their stunted 

 shrubs. The Creoles of Georgia twine the white 

 flowers of Rosa l^vigata among their sable locks, 

 plucking them from the lower branches of cHmb- 

 ing plants, which attach 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 en- 

 hance their fairness. And yet in the coldest re- 

 gions — for nature is ever bountiful as beautiful, 

 and that merciful power which makes the wheat 



