ROSES FOR EXHIBITIOI\. 23 1 



vocatii)j you must regard the selection which I 

 have made for you only as the foundation on 

 which you are to rear your Temple of Fame. 

 You must be as anxious as Norval's father to in- 

 crease your stock — or rather stocks — on which 

 you may bjid next summer, and thus multiply 

 your Rose-trees on the most economical, and, at 

 the same time, most successful system. Therefore 

 I would advise you, if you have the ambition to 

 distinguish yourself publicly as a Rosarian, to 

 plant in November, simultaneously with your 

 Rose-trees, not less than 500 stocks. But now 

 comes a most interesting and important consider- 

 ation — which stocks shall we prefer for the Rose ? 

 yEsop told the gardener of his master, Xan- 

 thus, that *' the earth was a stepmother to those 

 plants which were incorporated into her soil, but 

 a mother to those which are her own free produc- 

 tion ;" and wherever the Dog- Rose flourishes in 

 our hedge-rows — now delighting our eyes with its 

 flowers, and now scratching them out with its 

 thorns, should we follow the partridge or the fox 

 too wildly — there the Brier is the stock for the 

 Rose. I know that, despite the dictum of ^sop, 

 our soil has been no injnsta noverca to that foreign 

 Rose, which took the name of Manetti from him 

 who raised it from seed, and which was sent to 



