OUR QUEEN OF BEAUTY 43 



abundantly under their stunted shrubs. The Creoles 

 of Georgia twine the white flowers of Rosa Icevigata 

 among their sable locks, plucking them from the 

 lower branches of climbing plants, which attach 

 themselves to the garden trees of the forest, and 

 bloom profusely on their boles and boughs. The 

 parched shores of the Gulf of Bengal are covered 

 during the spring with a beautiful white Rose, found 

 also in China and Nepaul ; while in vast thickets of 

 the beautiful Rosa se77ipervirens (a native also of 

 China) the tigers of Bengal and the crocodiles of the 

 Ganges are known to lie in wait for their prey. The 

 north-west of Asia, which has been called the father- 

 land of the Rose, introduces to our notice the Rosa 

 centifolia, the most esteemed and renowned of all, 

 with which the fair Georgians and Circassians 

 enhance their fairness. And yet in the coldest 

 regions — for nature is ever bountiful as beautiful, 

 and that merciful power which makes the wheat to 

 grow everywhere for our food, sends also for our 

 delectation things pleasant to the eye — in Iceland 

 (I wish to confess honourably that I am still filching 

 from Boitard), so sterile in vegetation that in some 

 parts the natives are compelled to feed their horses, 

 sheep, and oxen on dried fish, we find the Rosa 

 rubtgtnosa, with its pale, solitary, cup-shaped flowers; 

 and in Lapland, blooming almost under the snows of 



