CHAPTER XIV. 



MULTIPLICATION BY SEED AND HYBRIDIZING. 



E have described, in former pages, the va- 

 rious modes of cultivating" the Rose, and of 

 propagating the many beautiful varieties 

 which exist, and would now briefly advert 

 to a mode of developing still farther the 

 beauty which lies hid within the horny cov- 

 ering that protects the dormant germ of 

 vitality — in other words, of obtaining new varieties by seed. With 

 the making of the seed-bed commenced a new era in the culture 

 of the Rose, and advancing with rapid strides, it made more 

 progress in forty years than in centuries before. The Dutch 

 seem to have been the first to raise roses from seed, by the same 

 mode which they applied successfully to their tulips, hyacinths, 

 <fcc., and from the time that this mode became generally employed, 

 the varieties of roses began to increase. In this species of culti- 

 vation the French soon outstripped their Dutch neighbors, and 

 gained the reputation which they still retain, of pre-eminent skill 

 in the production of new varieties of roses from the seed. 



From 1805 to 1810, the Empress Josephine, whose love for 

 flowers is well known, collected at her favorite residence, Mal- 

 maison, the choicest varieties of the Rose that could be obtained 

 from Holland, Germany and Belgium, and thus gave an increased 

 impulse to the culture of roses in the vicinity of Paris. 



According to De Pronville, a French writer, there were, in 



16 



