156 ROSES AND ROSE SHOWING. 



other warming, bleaching, shading, or disbudding processes, 

 as the case may require, obtain flowers of a size and com- 

 plexion which are not often met with except on the exhi- 

 bition tables. True, the garden during this process is in a 

 state of infinite disorder, but what does that matter to your 

 exhibitor ? He grows for a purpose and attains it. The 

 grower for plants, on the contrary, stops the shoots of the 

 last year's budded plants when only a few inches long, 

 whereby he destroys the first bloom ; but he gets a later 

 bloom, and what he chiefly aims at, instead of a few stout 

 and often ill-ripened shoots, many well-placed shoots of 

 moderate growth, and well-ripened. 



In France, although some growers show and some do 

 not, there is not this broad difference in their practice of 

 cultivation. All grow for plants. I discussed at length 

 with several of them the different ideas of showing preva- 

 lent in England and in France, and agreed with them 

 that the extra size of the flowers obtained in England by 

 the disbudding process was dearly bought by the absence 

 of flower-buds. I discussed this with M. Margottin, 

 especially at the flower-show at Sceaux, where the Roses 

 were in some cases very good. There was one fully 

 expanded flower of each sort exhibited, surrounded with 

 leaves, and two, three, or four beautiful buds in various 

 stages of development. There was far more beauty, to 

 my eye, in these Roses than in the larger flowers seen 

 afterwards at the Crystal Palace and Kensington, leafless 

 and budless, bald and unnatural, though very tidily set 

 up like so many rows of balls or of tea-cups in a toy or 

 china shop. But chacun a son gout. 



The effect of a Rose in the garden, the tout ensemble, 

 constitution, constancy, durability, leaves, and buds, as 

 well as flowers, enter more into the calculation of the 

 French than the English grower. Here, too, I think that 

 the Frenchman is right. But here, again, chacun a son 

 gout. 



Of the new Roses of 1867-8, I have seen the following 



