14 INTRODUCTION. 



orous treatment of whale-oil soap, quassia, 

 tobacco, hellebore, sulphur, and Paris green. 

 A huge syringe, intended to be attached to 

 the garden hose, and charged with any of 

 these insect dynamos, according to the will of 

 the operator, is a recent invention that will 

 be welcomed by all rose-growers. Armed 

 with this, it is claimed that death may be 

 meted out by wholesale to the insect scourges, 

 if the remedy be persistently applied. For in 

 rose pests, one brood of insects is far from 

 making a summer, and unremitting warfare 

 is the price of abundant bloom and vigorous 

 foliage. 



As producers of new roses, the French con- 

 tinue in the lead, though an extremely large 

 proportion of recent French varieties are 

 mediocre or useless for general cultivation, 

 or resemble so closely other well-known sorts 

 as to be of no increased value in themselves. 

 The incentive to produce new kinds, it should 

 be remembered, is especially great in France, 

 where twenty-five francs apiece is demanded 

 for a novelty which may be good, bad, or in- 

 different, but whose description is invariably 

 couleur de rose. Not that in the majority of 

 cases they are sent out with the deliberate 

 design to deceive the Rose owes too much to 

 Gallic intelligence, enthusiasm, and pains for 



