A Family History. 215 



thus to alter their character ; but in a wild state it 

 never comes to any good, because such plants can 

 never set seed, for want of pollen, and so die out in a 

 single generation. Our gardeners, however, carefully 

 select these distorted individuals, and so at length 

 produce the large, handsome, barren flowers with 

 which we are so familiar. The cabbage and moss 

 roses are monstrous forms thus bred from the common 

 wild French roses of the Mediterranean region ; the 

 China roses are cultivated abortions from an Asiatic 

 species ; and most of the other garden varieties are 

 artificial crosses between these or various other kinds, 

 obtained by fertilising the seed vessels of one bush 

 with pollen taken from the blossoms of another of a 

 different sort. To a botanical eye, double flowers, 

 however large and fine, are never really beautiful, 

 because they lack the order and symmetry which 

 appear so conspicuously in the five petals, the clus- 

 tered stamens, and the regular stigmas of the natural 

 form. 



From the great central division of the rose family, 

 thus represented by the potentillas, the strawberry, 

 the brambles, and the true roses, two main younger 

 branches have diverged much more widely in different 

 directions. As often happens, these junior offshoots 

 have outstripped and surpassed the elder stock in 



