THE ROSE GARDEN 101 



old chronicle, we cannot but wonder how a modern 

 rose catalogue with its many hundreds of names 

 would then have been regarded ! 



No flower, perhaps, has received more attention 

 from the hybridist; and it would be interesting 

 enough to retrace from their beginning all the 

 changes in which these labours have resulted; but 

 it will suffice to glance briefly at three distinct 

 developments which have succeeded each other 

 within living memory. The first was the gradual 

 evolution of the hybrid perpetual. Before the ar- 

 rival of these, roses had been mainly midsummer 

 flowers. A short six, or at most eight, weeks in 

 June and July, and their brief glory was past 

 and gone, save for the ever-faithful pink and crim- 

 son China roses, which loitered, then as now, on 

 sheltered walls or by cottage porches, till frost 

 came to punish them for their daring. There were 

 numberless varieties, graceful and fragrant, of these 

 summer roses, but what wonder if we all lost our 

 heads in a measure, and gave the old favourites 

 the cold shoulder, in the supreme delight of wel- 

 coming the perpetuals, which were to brighten 

 autumn as well as summer days with such glorious 

 shades of colour. Nevertheless, there was a lack, 

 and that a serious one, as time revealed we missed 

 the perfume of the summer roses; for the new- 

 comers, with all their added charms of brilliant 

 colour and prolonged season of bloom, were too 

 often practically scentless. But another factor was 

 at work. 'Tis now fifty years ago since Gloire de 

 Dijon, though by no means the first of the tea- 

 scented roses which bid for public favour, proved 



