14 ROSE CATALOGUES. 



is changed and become crimson ! In fact we may apply 

 to Roses what the poet has written about a very different 

 part of the creation : 



" How slow its pace ! And then its hue 

 Whoever saw so fine a blue ? 

 Hold there ! The other quick replies, 

 Tis green, I saw it with these eyes. 



Sirs ! Cries the umpire, cease your pother, 

 The creature's neither one nor t'other. 

 I caught the animal last night, 

 And viewed it o'er by candle light, 

 I marked it well, 'twas black as jet, 

 You stare but, sirs, I've got it yet, 

 And can produce it. 



Replies the man, 111 turn him out ; 

 And, when before your eyes I've set him, 

 If you don't find him black I'll eat him ; 

 He said, and full before their sight 

 Produced the beast, and lo ! 'Twas white " 



Prince Albert (Hybrid Perpetual) occasionally blooms 

 of a vivid crimson, and often of a cloudy purple. T. 

 Safranot opens almost saffron-coloured, but dies off a 

 poor buff. The first flowers I saw of Lady Alice Peel 

 (Hybrid Perpetual), now two years ago, were pink, and as 

 such I retain a vivid recollection of them although I have 

 never seen them of that colour since. I have just gathered 

 a flower of Bourbon Augustine Lelieur, which measures 

 fully four inches across ; but the colour is so different that, 

 had I not gathered it myself, I should have had some 

 difficulty in naming it. Without multiplying solitary in- 

 stances, if we view the whole body of Roses that bloom 

 twice in the year, and compare the colours noted down in 

 the Summer with their real appearance at this season, we 

 shall find a difference. But supposing Roses to bloom 

 alike at all times and in all situations, some indulgence 

 may be claimed from the public where 800 or 1000 varieties 

 are catalogued and described. Perhaps the first step toward 



