126 Literary Notice. 



He who plants a seed of a grape or a rose, a verbena or a pear, buys a ticket 

 in a lottery where single prizes are set off against myriads of blanks. Yet this 

 very uncertainty, added to the extreme brilliancy of the prizes, lures on one ama- 

 teur after another, until raising seedlings of some fruit or flower becomes, as at 

 present, the fashionable mania in the horticultural world. One gentleman in this 

 country is said to have thirty thousand seedling grape-vines under trial ; and 

 Mr. Parkman assures us that M. Laffay, an eminent French rose-cultivator, 

 raised in one year ten thnes that number of rose-seedlings. If twenty or thirty 

 good new roses resulted from this immense number of plants, the year's experi- 

 ment must have been considered very successful. 



The new roses of 1866, named and described in the Appendix, 2iX^ fifty-six, if 

 we have counted right ; and must represent the product of nearly half a million 

 seedling plants. Although there are countless distinct and splendid roses, there 

 is yet room for more ; and the amateur who produces a good climbing moss-rose 

 will win for himself a most honorable name. Let every rose-grower raise a few 

 seedlings, and keep in mind the words of the veteran Rivers: "These light 

 gardening operations are not labor : they are a delightful amusement to a refined 

 mmd, and lead it to reflect on the wonderful infinities of Nature," 



The second part of the book — that devoted to an elaborate classification of 

 roses — sheds a flood of light upon what was once incomprehensible. 



The author himself recognizes the formidable difficulties that stand in the 

 way of a strictly scientific classification ; but, in spite of these obstacles, — arising 

 from the interminable series of hybrids that have been artificially produced, — 

 he has given his readers a classification as far as possible removed from what he 

 calls the equivocal and shadowy character of many of the nominal distinctions. 



He explains the habits, mode of growth, and general character, of the varieties 

 in each subdivision ; and is careful to specify what kinds will, in our climate, 

 repay the cultivator for his pains and care. 



The remontant roses receive at the author's hands the attention they so well 

 deserve : and we are glad of this ; for we know many a garden that is never 

 made bright by a show of autumnal roses, although it has the old-fashioned 

 kinds in abundance. 



The best of these ever-blooming kinds, however, are getting more common 

 every year; and in a little while these brilliant /arz/^««j-, as the author calls some 

 of them, will be known everywhere, and meet with the recognition they merit 



It is not our purpose, nor indeed have we space, to go through Mr. Parkman's 

 book seriatim, taking up and discussing each chapter by itself. We are obliged 

 to speak of it in large and general terms. No foreign treatise, however excel- 

 lent at home, can be of much use here ; and the present work may be safely 

 said to be the only book on this subject that fully meets our wants. It bears 

 marks, of course, of elegant and refined scholarship, and is characterized through- 

 out by such thoroughness, accuracy, precision, and command of the subject 

 treated of, as fill us with renewed admiration of the varied accomplishments of 

 its learned author. Nobody should buy roses next spring, or plant those he has 

 bought this fall, without first making sure he is right by consulting Mr. Parkman. 



