162 feosacee—Rosa. 
height, but it varies excessively in this respect, as also in 
hahit, according to climate and situation. This polymorphism, 
moreover, renders it very difficult to describe and distinguish, 
and the thirty or more species or sub-species into which 
botanists have cut it up have no well-defined characters. Its 
most constant characters are: to be unprovided with bristles 
mixed with the spines, to be glabrous, and to assume an obscure 
purple tint on the parts most exposed to the sun. The flowers 
are usually pale rose, more rarely white or inclining to carmine. 
Lastly, its ovoid-oblong fruits, scarlet when ripe, distinguish 
it from many neighbouring species where this organ is short 
and rounded. This Rose has not of itself yielded any garden 
varieties of note; but it is not improbable that some hybrid 
varieties have resulted from crosses of this with other species. 
Its importance as a stock for standard Rose-trees cannot be over- 
estimated, as it is very hardy, and produces clean straight 
stems adinirably adapted for this purpose. 
R. Indica, the Tea Rose, despite its name, came from China, 
where it has probably been cultivated from the most ancient 
times. It is, like our European species, very variable and 
uncertain in its characters; and it is questionable whether it 
would not be better to unite the following species with it, as 
some authors have done. For want of data we accept Lindley’s 
opinion, who held it to be a distinct species. 
It is a shrub 5 to 10 feet or more high, with long slender 
gliucous shoots with scattered hooked brownish spines. The 
leaves are shining, smooth, composed of 3 to 5 flat ovate- 
acuminate leaflets of a deep green above and glaucous below. 
Flowers large, rose, flesh or yellowish in colour, ordinarily semi- 
double, borne on scabrous elongated peduncles. The fruit 
is rounded in form, or shortly obovoid, reddish scarlet when 
mature. One of its varieties, by some distinguished as a 
species under the name of R. odoratissima, is remarkable 
for the fragrance of its flowers. The innumerable varieties 
which have been obtained from it, either directly or by crossing, 
are far from repeating exactly the characters that we have 
just assigned to the specific type. 
The Tea Rosc, one of the great modern acquisitions of 
horticulture, was introduced into Europe towards the end of 
the last century, though it is not known by whom, nor the 
exact year. What is certain, however, is that it was seen for 
the first time in 1793, in the earden of an English amateur 
