176 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



found fully described in the pages of Kivers and the 

 Dean of Rochester. But there are three double roses 

 that are such special favourites with me for different 

 reasons that I must say some little about them. One 

 is the old cabbage rose, a rose so much neglected that 

 a few years ago it could only be found in a few old 

 gardens, and in cottage gardens. Yet it is a rose of 

 a wonderful scent which no other rose has, and its 

 historical interest is very great. Not only is it the 

 red rose of England and the ' provincial rose ' of 

 Hamlet, but it is probably the oldest cultivated 

 rose we have, so old that its native country is 

 unknown. One of its names with us is the hundred- 

 leafed rose, and under that name it was recorded by 

 Theophrastus and Pliny (eVta elvai c^ao-iv a Kal KaXova-Lv 

 iKaTovTdcjivXXa — Theoph., Centifolium vacant, Plin.). It 

 is the parent of the moss roses and of the pompone, 

 or de Memix, and of many others now gone out of culti- 

 vation. A second favourite double, or semi-double, rose 

 is the York and Lancaster, of which there are two 

 kinds; one a very old rose, in which the petals are 

 sometimes white and sometimes pink, and sometimes 

 white and pink in the same flower. This is without 

 doubt the 'roses damasked, red and white,' the rose 

 ' nor red nor white had stolen of both ' of Shakespeare, 

 and it is the R. versicolor of the old botanical writers. 



