230 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



grows here and there on some favoured south wall, 

 and perhaps will come again as a " new " rose when 

 we have got tired of our last batch of teas or per- 

 petuals. Cloth of Gold is (or perhaps was) a noisette, 

 and therefore descends from the Indian strain, mingled 

 with that of the musk-rose, from which comes ottar 

 of roses, and which flings its petals over Omar 

 Khayyam's tomb. Aim6e Vibert has outlived her 

 younger sister, but the other noisettes of early 

 Victorian days have gone. Mare"chal Niel would 

 not be recognised as a descendant by those who 

 loved Ophirie and Celine Forestier, and to-day the 

 noisette race is lost in the great crowd of the " tea- 

 scented roses " with which it has mingled. 



The numerous cabbage-roses of our grandmothers' 

 days are supposed to be extinct, but surely their 

 place is well supplied by the two thousand or more 

 hybrid perpetuals which more or less justify their 

 name by filling our gardens with heavy colour the 

 summer and autumn through. The Indian, French, 

 and Damascus strains that supply the hybridisers with 

 their favourite material have thus far proved wonder- 

 fully complacent. Perhaps there are new triumphs 

 ahead. Perhaps we are being led into a cul-de-sac. 

 Perhaps, when the varying period of these roses has 

 worked out, our own dog-roses, the Banksian, the 

 beautiful wild Carolinan, and the tribe to which 

 the Japanese rugosa belongs may begin to produce 

 that "swarm of mutations " which, some evolutionists 

 say, comes to each species once in a thousand years 

 or so. These are wilder roses than the others. 

 They have for the most part resisted the beginnings 

 of the policy that would end in making them into 



