BOTANICAL CLASSIFICATION. 213 



Although there are no double wild roses known at the present 

 day, either in Europe or in this country, yet as other flowers 

 have been found double in a wild state, it is not impossible that 

 some of the ancient varieties bore double flowers in their native 

 condition in the fields. Such may have been the Centifolias, 

 mentioned by Pliny and Theophrastus, as growing upon Mount 

 Panga, and those which at a still earlier period, according to 

 Herodotus, grew wild in Macedonia, near the ancient gardens of 

 Midas. 



The poverty in description which we have observed in ancient 

 writings, and their comparatively small number of species, extends 

 also to a much later day. In a little treatise published in France 

 in 1536, a*nd entitled De re Hortensis Libellus, there are but four 

 species mentioned, and scarcely anything concerning their cul- 

 ture. An Italian work published in 1563, mentions only eight 

 species. In the Florilegium of Sweet, a folia volume printed at 

 Frankfort in 1612, are ten very coarse representations of roses, 

 but with no indication of their names. 



In the Paradisus Terrestris of Parkinson, a folio volume 

 printed at London in 1629, some twenty-four species are men- 

 tioned. Some of them are represented by figures in wood, which 

 are very coarse, and scarcely allow recognition of their species. 

 In the Jardinier flollandois, printed at Amsterdam in 1 669, are 

 found but 14 species of roses, very vaguely described, with 

 scarcely anything on culture. 



The first work which treated of roses with any degree of 

 method, is that of La Q,uintyne, published at Paris in 1&90, and 

 yet its details of the different species and varieties do not occupy 

 more than a page and a half, while twenty-one pages are given 

 to the culture of tulips and fifty to pinks. While he describes 

 225 varieties of pinks and 413 tulips, he mentions only 14 

 species and varieties of roses. For a century subsequent to the 

 publication of La Q,uintyne's work, the Rose is very little men- 

 tioned, either in English or French works, and there is nothing 

 to indicate the existence at that time of many species, two or 

 three only being required for medicine and perfumery. Some of 



