230 THE BOOK OF THE ROSE chap. 



had to contend. Being a plucky man of resource, 

 he resolved on an unusual experiment ; he uncovered 

 the boxes, and set them to stand for a considerable 

 time in the full glare of the sun. Whether the 

 others took him for a lunatic or an ignorant novice 

 I do not know ; but I do know that he brought me 

 back the first prize. 



In several of the handbooks of instruction on how 

 to show Eoses the exhibitor is warned to be careful 

 how he arranges them as to colour for general effect. 

 Of course this is worth doing, if it means arranging 

 all the best blooms thus, but under no circum- 

 stances should a light or dark bloom be introduced 

 for the sake of colour if it is not worthy in itself. I 

 am bound to say that it is very rarely that judges 

 pay any heed to the arrangement : they look at the 

 merits of the blooms themselves, and a preponder- 

 ance of dark over light flowers or vice versa would 

 have usually no effect with them. Successful 

 arrangement is only taken into consideration where 

 rival stands are very nearly equal in the merits of 

 the individual blooms. 



There will seldom be any need to look over the 

 stand at the last to see if there are any duplicates, 

 i.e. two of the same sort, if care has been exercised 

 in this respect from the beginning, and no Eose is 

 introduced without being sure about it. But a 

 bloom may sometimes be accidentally changed 

 without altering the label, so these should be run 

 over to see that they are right. The National Eose 

 Society authorities are lenient in this matter, 

 provided there be no duplicates, but country judges 

 are sometimes more strict. 



There is room for a good deal of legitimate 



