88 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



but not so great as that old lady hoped, who, 

 bringing home a mistaken impression, after listen- 

 ing to a conversation between two gardeners on 

 the beneficial influence of leaf-mould on Tea- 

 Roses, collected for weeks the morning and even- 

 ing remains of the tea-pot, and applied them to 

 her Rose-trees "to transform them," as she told 

 her acquaintance (and I am assured of the fact by 

 one of them), " into tea-scented Chinas next 

 summer." 



Nor, crossing the seas, among those bird- 

 islands of Peru, Bolivia, Patagonia, in which — 

 barren, rainless, and, as they seem to man, use- 

 less — the fish-fed fowls of the ocean were accumu- 

 lating for centuries a treasure-heap more precious 

 than gold — millions upon millions of tons of rich 

 manure, which has multiplied the food of nations 

 throughout the civilized world, and still remains 

 in immense abundance for us and generations 

 after us. Guano, nevertheless, is not tJie manure 

 for Roses. Its influence is quickly and promi- 

 nently acknowledged, by additional size and 

 brightness of foliage,* but the efflorescence, so 

 far as my experiments have shown, derives no ad- 



* The Rev. W. F. Radclyffe strongly recommends saltpetre and 

 nitrophosphate (blood) manure, as imparting a deeper, richer green 

 to folia8:e. 



