SHOWING ROSES IN FRANCE. 



535 



tlie summer water must "be given freelj;, but not in excess. 

 The best time to give it is in the morning ; and at night 

 the plants will require a little syringing on the leaves, but 

 only in the hottest time of the year. Liquid manure given 

 with great moderation will do them good and quicken their 

 vegetation. The small plants which have passed beyond the 

 hotbed stage should be potted in a very rich light soil, and 

 not too sandy, say nine parts of soil divided as follows : — ■ 

 Three of maiden loam, two and a half of yellow loam, one 

 and a half of old dung mould, one of peat, and one of sand. 

 In potting plants of a larger size, the soil should be a little 

 stronger, and be composed as follows : — Three and a half of 

 maiden loam, three of yellow loam, one of thoroughly rotten 

 dung, a quarter of peat, and one part of sand.'''' 



Showing Roses in France. — Rose-growing friend has 

 suggested to me that it might be well to mention any 

 novelties in arrangement adopted by the French in showing 

 Roses, but I know of little worthy of recommendation. 

 The great exhibition of Roses at Brie Comte Robert — sur- 

 prising accounts of which appeared in the daily papers at 

 the time — -was, in some respects, a very different affair to 

 what might have been expected from the reports of it 

 spread abroad. Brie Comte Robert is situated in a very 

 pleasant country, twenty miles or so from Paris — a country 

 without hedges or ditches, yet picturesque and pretty from 

 the number of fruit trees dotted over the land, and with (at 

 the time of my visit) the ears of ripening wheat bending 

 into the straight well-made roads — a country with rich sandy- 

 loam and gentle hills, like parts of Kent, and for the main 

 part covered with wide level spreads of wheat and vines. 

 Brie Comte Robert is an ordinary and rather straggling 

 little French town, with an interesting old church traced 

 with the beautiful art of the olden time, and grey with the 

 lichens of a thousand years ; and finally. Brie Comte Robert 

 has a fete and a great Rose-show, as all the world has been 

 informed. 



The Rose-show, althoiigh pretty and remarkable of its 

 kind, is not quite a marvel, but simply an adjunct to the 

 village fair. Now, the fete of a small place like this is not 



