§& The Old looses & 



found growing in Canon Ellacombe's garden at Bitton in 

 Gloucestershire. The most beautiful variety is the rich 

 red Cramoisie Sup£rieure, raised in 1832 by an amateur 

 living near Angers, and distributed by Vibert in 1835. 

 This rose has transmitted its beautiful colour to many 

 hybrids. The ash-leaved variety (R. fraxinellae folia), with 

 fragrant white flowers, was introduced from France in 

 1 8 16. Through the East India Company the China 

 Monthly rose was sent to India, where it became known 

 as the Bengal rose. According to Rivers, the China 

 Monthly rose and the Rose of the Four Seasons were the 

 only roses grown in the Isle of Bourbon as hedges, and, 

 indeed, the only roses grown at all in the island in the 

 eighteenth century. He gives the following account of 

 the origin of the Bourbon rose : * At the Isle of Bourbon 

 the inhabitants generally enclose their land with hedges 

 made of two rows of roses ; one row of the common 

 China rose, the other of the Red Four Seasons.' Monsieur 

 Perichon, a proprietor at St. Benoist in the Isle, in plant- 

 ing one of these hedges, found amongst his young plants 

 one very different from the others in its shoots and foliage. 

 This induced him to plant it in his garden. It flowered 

 the following year, and, as he anticipated, proved to be of 

 quite a new race, and differing much from the above two 

 roses, which, at the time, were the only sorts known on 

 the island. Monsieur Breon arrived at Bourbon in 181 7 

 as botanical traveller for the Government of France and 

 Curator of the Botanical and Naturalization Garden 

 there. He propagated this rose very largely and sent 

 plants and seeds of it in 1822 to Monsieur Jaques, gar- 

 dener to the Duke of Orleans, at the Chateau de Neuilly, 

 near Paris, who distributed them amongst the rose 



127 



