

THE ROSE. 45 
A HISTORY OF ROSES BY A FRENCH ROSARIAN, 
1874. 
es years ago the Rose list of Decemet was 
considered very full; it included 300 roses. In 
1830 we knew about 2,500 varieties; we have now 
more than double that number, and this fact is 
mainly owing to the seedlings by hybridisations, 
and the intelligent selections of French florists. 
If France is not the native country of the Rose, 
which like the vine was born in Asia, it is in 
France that the vine and the Rose have found 
‘the soil, the climate and the care which have 
made their fortunes. More than 5,000 Roses! and 
how many simple admirers of nature, with the 
poets at their head, seem to think them only one; 
the Rose of Homer, of Virgil, of Delille, and of St. 
Lambert. But of the poet’s Rose we have no 
picture, noactual record. There is every reason 
to suppose however, it was the Rosa centifolia, the 
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