ROSE. 171 



greatest beauties amongst the autumnal tints, 

 being of a bright scarlet, perfectly smooth and 

 glossy, and of an elegant oblong shape. This 

 brier is often called the Hip-tree, from the 

 name of the fruit. 



" Still hungering, pennyless, and far from home, 



I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws. 



# # # # # 



Hard fare ! but such as boyish appetite 



Disdains not." Cowper. 



Many persons eat this fruit with pleasure 

 when mellowed by the frost. It was formerly 

 much used as a conserve, the seeds being 

 taken out, and the pulp beaten up with sugar. 

 Gerard says, " The fruit, when it is ripe, 

 maketh most pleasant meates and banketting 

 dishes, as tartes, and such like." The fruit of 

 the rose is nothing more than a fleshy urceo- 

 late calyx, from whence the stigma springs, 

 and it afterwards becomes the repository of 

 the true fruit or seed, after the manner of the 

 fig, excepting that the seeds of the hip are 

 divided by silky bristles, or prickly fibres, which 

 cause great irritation on the primas vise, if 

 eaten. 



It is the strong shoots of this species of 

 rose-tree that the largest kinds of garden roses 

 are now grafted on; and by this means we see, 

 instead of bushes, tall stems throwing out a 



