128 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



snows are on the ground. With half-a-dozen pots 

 of it carefully treated, and half-a-dozen trees in 

 your garden, you may enjoy it all the year round; 

 and if ever, for some heinous crime, I were miser- 

 ably sentenced, for the rest of my life, to possess 

 but a single Rose-tree, I should desire to be sup- 

 plied, on leaving the dock, with a strong plant of 

 Gloire de Dijon. 



As to treatment, although this Rose, like some 

 thoroughbred horse, will do its work Avith little 

 grooming and scanty fare, it well repays that gen- 

 erous diet which I have previously prescribed. In 

 pruning, take away all weakly wood, and you 

 may then deal with the strong as you please. If 

 you want to increase the height of your tree, 

 ** cut boldly," as said the Augur, and low. If 

 you desire short flov/ering laterals, you may have 

 them, a dozen on a shoot, or from as many ''eyes'* 

 as you like to leave on it. 



There are three Roses, I am well aware — 

 three sisters of this same "most divinely tall'* 

 family — more beautiful, if you compare the indi- 

 vidual flowers, than that which I have preferred 

 before them. When we held our third National 

 Rose-show in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham — 

 the first of those exhibitions which have since 

 been so popular in that grand creation of a gar- 



