536 



SHOWING ROSES IN FRANCE. 



at first sight, or when examined in detail, a thing to be 

 enraptured with. Imagine a grassy yard or small field, in 

 the centre of which are a few tables, and the little hut of a 

 person who divines the future ; and all round the margin, a 

 lot of small, meagre, dirty, canvas tents occupied with 

 various things, from temporary restaurants and gingerbread 

 stalls down to diminutive billiards and little games in which 

 the yokels of the district invest a sou a time, and now and 

 then win a trifling work of art worth about a centime. 

 Imagine, in short, the mildest and smallest corner of Donny- 

 brook fair, with every drop of " divilment^'' squeezed out 

 of it, and you have a pretty good idea of the sight that 

 greeted my eyes as I entered the show-yard of Brie Comte 

 Robert. But at one end there was a very large oblong tent, 

 and on entering that a very difi'erent sight presented itself. 

 Here all was fragi^ance and beautiful colour. All the Boses 

 were placed on the ground — no stages of any kind being 

 used. First of all, there ran right round the great oblong 

 tent a sloping bed of sandy earth, about five feet wide, covered 

 with young Barley, the seed of which had been sown eight 

 or ten days before. On this were thickly placed the Boses 

 —eight rows deep, or thereabouts. They were for the 

 greater part shown in small earthenware bottles, about five 

 inches high, with long narrow necks and wide globose 

 bases; and, placed amongst the Barley-grass, they looked 

 very well indeed. Generally three or more Boses were 

 placed in each bottle, which was made of ordinary garden- 

 pot stuff, and of the same colour ; and they looked so much 

 better than those of glass used by some exhibitors, that 

 their use should be made compulsory. Thus the most con- 

 spicuous thing in the tent was a dense bed of Boses around 

 its sides. In the central parts of the tent there were beds 

 of various shapes in which the Boses were plunged in moss, 

 and mostly arranged in masses ; for example, a bed of 

 700 blooms of General Jacqueminot, edged with a line of 

 Aimee Vibert ; a bed of Madame Boll, edged with white 

 and red Boses, all the flowers plunged singly in dark green 

 moss, and so on. The competitors vied rather in quantity 

 than in quality, and one exhibitor showed as many as 600 



