The Brier Roses 



Beauty guarded by a prickly Sweet Brier hedge? 

 Chaucer talks of hedges of " Sicamour and Eglatere." 

 So the Penzance Brier hedge is, therefore, doubly accept- 

 able finer, more vigorous, more brilliant, and even 

 more fragrant. It is the ideal fencing to ring a Rose 

 garden light, airy and many-hued; and in early May 

 days when the air is moist and the sun warm, a 

 perfect wave of fragrance bathes one as one passes, a 

 fragrance all the more grateful because the roses within 

 the garden have not yet put out their scented blooms. 

 In parenthesis one may remark that the Briers are 

 always more lavish of their scent under the influence 

 of moisture. Keats sang of " dew-sweet Eglantine," 



and how 



" rain-scented Eglantine 



Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun." 



What better hedge, too, than its tall arching sprays 

 could be found for " The Sweet Garden " that Dean 

 Hole speaks of, a little fenced-in garden filled ex- 

 clusively with sweet-scented flowers gillyflowers, honey- 

 suckle, clove-pink, jasmine, verbena, rosemary and every ' 

 fragrant plant that in succession by day, and even, as 

 with the honeysuckle, specially by night, would fill 

 the air with sweetness and make it a blind man's para- 

 dise ? The essential oils which give rise to this odour 

 are contained in myriads of reddish glandular hairs 



that edge the teeth of the leaf margins, and cover 



177 



