DEVELOPMENT OF HYBRID PERPETUAL ROSES. 195 



remontantes " of the French, and Hybrid Perpetual of the 

 English catalogues. The earliest of these were Du Roi, 

 Antinous, Belle Faber, Bernard, De Neuilly, D'Esquermes, 

 Due d'Enghien, Josephine Antoinette, La Mienne, Palmyre, 

 Requien, &c., and a little later on appeared Aubernon, 

 Baronne Prevost, Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Alice Peel, 

 La Reine, Louis Bonaparte, Madame LafTay, Mrs Elliot, 

 William Jesse, and some twenty others, all introduced 

 before 1846. Onwards from this date the novelties kept 

 increasing in number yearly, till sometimes as many as one 

 hundred new names appeared in a single year. Monsieur 

 LafTay, of Bellevue, near Paris, was the largest and most 

 successful raiser, but there were others as MM. Verdier, 

 Portemer, Guerin, Duval, Vibert, Guillot, and Lacharme, 

 who helped on the development. The favourite seed- 

 bearers with M. Lafifay were for a long time Hybrid Chinas 

 and Hybrid Bourbons, crossed with the Bourbon and 

 Damask Perpetual, and the divergence of the offspring on 

 these two lines became year by year more strongly marked. 

 But M. Laffay did not restrict himself for any length 

 of time to these lines, using step by step almost every 

 popular form of the flower with the view of development, 

 hybrids of the Moss Rose being perhaps the most 

 original and distinct of his later gains. The de- 

 velopment of this group (Hybrid Perpetual) over the last 

 forty years is no doubt in the memory of many 

 of your readers. The group has now been so long 

 popular, and so many have been working to improve it, 

 that we may find among its various members traces of 

 almost every floricultural group into which the genus 

 Rosa stands divided. Most distinctly do we see traces 

 of the Moss Rose (Perpetual Moss), the Provence, the 

 Alba, the Noisette, the Bourbon, and Tea-Scented. In 

 dealing with the latter (Tea-Scented) the late Mr Henry 

 Bennett, of Shepperton, has been perhaps the most suc- 

 cessful operator. His earliest varieties, although distinct, 

 were not possessed of any marked excellence, but as time 



