SOME TYPES OF BIRDS' NESTS 



'973 



shades, and for fragrant petals, are Bush 

 or Dwarf Roses, now to be obtained in 

 hundreds if not in thousands of varieties. 

 Dozens of new ones are sent out every year 

 by professional growers, and last year 

 alone nine survived the severest test of 

 all, and received the gold medal of the 

 National Rose Society. The profusion 

 with which new Roses are now showered 

 upon flower lovers is remarkable. Some 

 have onty a fleeting career ; they flash 

 in the firmament of Roses as meteors 

 across the sky and are gone, to be seen 

 or heard of no more ; they were not so 

 good as Roses already in cultivation. 

 Others, more perhaps on account of 

 their novelty than in virtue of any real 

 merits they possess, shine brightly for a 

 few seasons, but alas ! they fail to live 

 up to their reputation, and their light, too, 

 goes out. Public opinion moulds the 

 destiny of a new Rose. Let it be 

 whispered that the colour is not pleasing, 

 that its petals are ill-formed, that it 

 lacks any one of those qualities which 

 stand for birth and breeding, and not the 

 greatest effort can avail to set up a new 

 Rose on the pinnacle from whicla it has 

 fallen. In many ways the newer sorts 

 are a great improvement on the old 

 ones ; chiefly because they give us flowers 

 in summer and autumn, while formerly 

 we were well content to gather Rose buds 

 in June and blossoms in July. Nowadays 



a carefully planted garden is gay from 

 Mav until October. Most exquisite of the 

 new Roses are those of yellow, apricot 

 and old gold shades, such, for example, 

 as Madame Ravary, Betty, Mme. Pierre 

 Cochet, Harry Kirk and Souvenir de 

 Pierre Notting. Those are among the 

 most delightful Roses in cultivation, 

 and some of them should be in eveiy 

 border. Our chief lament now is 

 for crimson Roses that will bloom in 

 autumn as well as in summer. In 

 September our Rose buds are gay with 

 blooms in white, pink, rose-pink, salmon- 

 pink, and many other shades of pink, but 

 the crimson Rose is conspicuous chiefly 

 by its absence. 



After all, the most treasured possession 

 of our Rose garden, the characteristic 

 that is of paramount value, is the quality 

 of fragrance. We might dispense with 

 perfectly formed petals in entrancing 

 colour shades, with continuity of flowering 

 and vigour of growth ; all these are as 

 nothing if in gaining them we lose frag- 

 rance, for this is the very soul of a garden 

 of Roses. The glamour which invests its 

 leaves and flowers is born of fragrance ; in 

 fragrance it must live, without sweet scent 

 must die. Yet many of the new sorts 

 which have come to stay are not sweet 

 scented, and they deserve no place within 

 the flower-embosomed gates of the garden 

 of Roses. H. H. Thomas. 



SOME TYPES OF BIRDS' NESTS— II 



By BENJAMIN HANLEY 



"With Photofiraphs by the Author 



PROBABLY a nesting ramble in a 

 country lane yields the best results, 

 for in such ])laces there is usually 

 to be found more variety than elsewhere. 

 One can tell from the variety of bird 

 voices heard that many kinds of nests are 

 to be seen for the seeking. 



The Song Thrush fluently singing from 



the topmost branch of an oak tree is 

 happy in the knowledge that somewhere 

 deep down in the hedge beneath him his 

 mate is safely covering her black-spotted 

 turquoise-blue eggs in their cup-shaped 

 resting-place ; the Greenfinch swaying 

 gently at tlie end of a twig monotonously 

 •• cheeing " to his sitting mate ; the Black- 



