§J The Scented Qarden fj£ 



brought in some immemorial time from the Caucasus to 

 France. This was ' the Provincial Rose on my razed 

 shoes ' of which Hamlet spoke. Whether or no it is the 

 rose of Homer we do not know. But for centuries it has 

 been grown in our gardens, and alas ! that now it is so 

 seldom seen. I love the old descriptions of the cabbage 

 rose, and I quote the following from Andrews : 



1 This is the most fragrant of all R.oses and therefore 

 particularly desirable, for although it cannot be ranked 

 among the rare, it is nevertheless one of the most beauti- 

 ful. Its sweetness joined to the abundance of its blossom, 

 has rendered it an object of culture, for the purpose of 

 distillation, as it yields a much greater quantity of 

 scented water than any other rose. It is generally de- 

 nominated the Cabbage Provence, from the extreme com- 

 plexity of its petals, which sometimes adhere so closely 

 together as to prevent entirely their expansion without 

 bursting, a circumstance that frequently occurs in the 

 vegetable from which its specific distinction is derived, 

 and which we regard to be unequivocally good as we 

 should every similitude of equally easy reference.' 



In Redoute's time there were about a hundred varieties 

 of this glorious rose, and in the middle of the nineteenth 

 century about seventy, but the majority of these have 

 long since been lost. The famous Yellow Provence (R. 

 sulphur ea syn R. hemispherica) is very hard to get now. 

 Mr. Courtney Page has it. Lindley describes it as a 

 species and gives Persia and Constantinople as its origin. 

 William Paul, writing in 1847, also refers to it as a separate 

 species and gives Persia and Turkey as its origin. Accord- 

 ing to Parkinson, this rose * was first procured to be 

 brought into England by Master Nicholas Lete, a worthy 

 108 



