HOW TO SHOW THE ROSE. 245 



to the neck in the moss aforesaid ; but sometimes 

 the succulent potato was used to preserve vitaHty ; 

 and I remember well a large hamper, with its lid 

 gracefully recumbent, in which six small Roses 

 uprose from huge specimens of "Farmers' Profit" — 

 the pommes de terre being inserted, but not 

 concealed, in a stratum of ancient hay. Sometimes 

 the flowers were crowded together, sometimes 

 they were lonely, neighborless, like the snipes, 

 now in "wisps," now solitary; sometimes they, 

 appeared without foliage (at one of our provincial 

 shows it was strictly prohibited, and I asked the 

 committee what they meant by coming on the 

 ground with whiskers) ; and sometimes they peeped 

 out of leafy bowers — "plenty of covert, but very 

 little game," as a witty Lincolnshire lord remarked 

 to the clergyman, who asked him, one Christmas 

 morning, what he thought of the decorations of a 

 church in which the evergreens were many and 

 the worshippers few\ 



At our first National Rose-Show we com- 

 menced a reform of these incongruities, and soon 

 afterwards disannulled them by an act of uniform- 

 ity as to size and shape. The amateur must 

 therefore order his boxes, which any carpenter can 

 make for him from three-quarter-inch deal, to be 

 of the following dimensions : — 



