282 DR. J. W. HESLOP HARRISON ON 



had, moreover, already published an account of his new 

 variety glabra in his earlier " Review." Yet one remark in 

 the " Monograph " seems, when viewed in connection with 

 later developments, to be very illuminating. He says : " In 

 general habit, when in flower, the ordinary glabrous English 

 form has just the same sort of resemblance to typical canina 

 that Doitiaiia \SabiinY' has to moIUssiina \mollis\r 



Six years later, in 1875, Dr. Christ, the Swiss botanist, once 

 again raised the subject in the Journal of Botany, and 

 deliberately propounded the question " What is Rosa hibernica 

 Smith?" To this he supplied the answer, " Ce rosier est un 

 hybride entre le R. canina, L., et le R. pimpinellifolia, L.," 

 adding as his reasons its mixed characters (armature of 

 spinosissima, fruit oi canina, etc.) and, most important of all, 

 its manifest sterility — the then recognised criterion of the 

 interspecific hybrid. Furthermore, he pointed out that Fries 

 had determined the glabrous form of Rosa hibernica (= var. 

 glabra, Baker) to be Rosa spinosissima X R. canina. 



At the time these views were not adopted universally, and 

 those contrary to them were never absolutely confuted; never- 

 theless, no one to-day disputes their validity. 



Events moved on similar lines with the parallel hybrid to 

 this in which R. spinosissima Ypimpinellifolia\ and R. tonientosa 

 {sens, laliss.) took part, for in 1S09 Smith brought forward in 

 Flora Britannic a, 2^% &. new species, a Scotch rose which he 

 termed Rosa involuta. This was speedily followed by the 

 description of those alleged species by Woods in iZid, Rosa 

 Sabini, R. Doniana and R. gracilis, to wit. In this case, the 

 critical eye of Lindley perceived glimmerings of the truth very 

 early, for, in his "Monograph " (1821), we find him asserting 

 his doubts as to whether, after all, this is not a product of 

 R. tomentosa var. mollis \_R. mollis^ — a remark repeated by 

 Hooker in Flora Scoiica. Still more allied forms turned up, 

 Rosa IVilsoni erected by Borrer in 1835, R. corona/a collected 

 by Crepin in Belgium in 1858, R. var. Roberlsoni dtiicnhidd by 



■* Words in square brackets added by me. 



