

THE ROSE. 15 
DESCRIPTIVE. 
Lf hie habits and colours of the several varieties 
of the Rose are almost without end, and 
yet there is great beauty in each of them. Then 
the perfume with which they embalm the zephyr, 
as it plays gently over them, diffusing an odour 
most delightful to the sense, and exhilarating to 
the mind. In mostinstances the odour ofa flower 
dies along with it, but not so with the Rose, for 
some leaves gathered by the writer at Tower 
Grove, in 1852, and preserved in a jar, are now 
(1877) still fragrant. We find it yielding a 
variety of fragrant liquors, and the attar of roses 
especially, when prepared in the valley of the 
Ganges, or in Cashmere, where square miles are 
devoted to the growth of this flower, is now 
almost the only substance which, weight for 
weight, is more valuable than gold. 
The shrub varies in size, usually from one to six 
or eight feet; the colours are red, white, yellow, 
purple-striped, and in almost numberless shades 


