TJie neio Roses of 1855. 



149 



THE NEW ROSES OF 1865. 



BY TH05US RIVERS, [SAWBRIDGEWORTH, ENGLAND.] 



N common with most of our flowers and fruits, 

 , there are every year new Roses in abundance ; 

 ^^^^^^^^^^ but owing to the present high standard of ex- 

 f JBH|S^^^''V' collence in Roses, but very few of the new 

 varieties can be honestly recommended. It is 

 true their names and their descriptions are en- 

 ticing, owing to the false judgment of those 

 'who raise them from seed, who, with that peculiar 

 leaning which every florist feels for a flower of 

 his own creation, see in them qualities far above 

 their deserts ; they describe them with glowing 

 language, because they love them as a parent 

 loves his children, and are surprised when a cool, dis- 

 tinguished looker-on, points out defects which their affection-blinded 

 eyes never detected. There were probably from sixty to eighty new 

 varieties of Roses " introduced to commerce," as the French phase 

 is, during the autumn of 1854 and spring of 1855. Many of these 

 are pretty enough — for what Rose is not pretty ? — but those of really 

 fine qualities, excelling, or even equaling, such Roses as Prince 

 Leon, General Jacqueminot, Paid Dupuy, General Bedeau, Madame 

 Rivers, and many others, are lamentably few ; so much so, that 

 one almost fears the point of perfection has been attained, and 

 that no better Roses than those we now possess can or will be 

 originated. 



The following varieties will, I think, however, be found worthy 

 of a place in the Rose garden : — 



Lord Raglan, a seedling from Geante des Batailles, is a full-sized, 

 cupped, and very double Rose, of nearly the same color as the 

 parent, but varying with the season ; in July of this year it was 

 brilliant crimson, a little deeper in color than its parent, in Au- 

 gust it gave some blooms of the most dazzling scarlet, and I then 

 thought it the most brilliant and beautiful Rose I had ever beheld. 

 The Emperor Napoleon, of the same parentage, is quite as brilliant 

 in colour, but its flowers are small, not double, and not regularly 

 shaped. Madvime Place, is a most neat, beautifully shaped, ele- 



