CULTURE OF THE ROSE. 135 



and with the large robust branches of the La Reine and other 

 Perpetuals, and others again planted with some delicate climb- 

 ing roses, whose branches falling down, would form a weeping 

 tree of a most unique, graceful, and showy character. The pipes 

 could be made of earthenware, tin or wood, and be painted in 

 imitation of the bark of a tree. Still better would be the trunk 

 of a small tree, hollowed out for the purpose, which, with the 

 bark on, would puzzle many a close observer, and which could 

 show a luxuriant head of leaves and flowers on the most sterile 

 soil that ever formed a lawn. 



From what has been said on the culture of roses among the 

 Moors in Spain, there can be no doubt that they had made great 

 progress therein ; and with the exception of a few statements, 

 evidently unfounded in fact, as the grafting of the Rose on the 

 almond, the apple, the jujube, and other trees, the little treatise 

 translated by De la Neuville certainly contains most excellent 

 remarks upon the culture of roses, whether we compare them 

 with what the ancients have left us, or even with those of the 

 various writers on Rose culture in Europe and America within 

 the last half century. 



As roses were so frequently propagated from the seed by the 

 Moors, they must have known quite a number of varieties, ex- 

 clusive of all those they had brought or obtained from the East. 

 The Yellow Rose, unknown to us until recently, was apparently 

 familiar to them ; and the Blue Rose, of which their manuscripts 

 speak, is now extinct, if it indeed ever existed ; for amid the infi- 

 nite variety of roses, of every color and shade, produced from 

 seed in modern times, no one has yet obtained a purely Blue 

 Rose, and its former existence may well seem to us incredible. 



The Marquis d'Orbessan, in an essay on Roses, read before 

 the French Academy of Sciences at Toulouse, in 1752, stated 

 that he had seen blue roses growing wild near Turin, and that 

 they were moreover quite common there. After this testimony, 

 therefore, and that of the Arabian author, blue roses can scarcely 

 be considered impossible, but only a very rare production a sort 

 of lusus natures. 



