72 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



and other mosses, from forest and bog ; their top- 

 spits from the rich old pasture ; their manures, 

 natural and artificial, from Peru to the farmyard. 

 They stand in their potting-sheds surrounded by 

 these varied articles of home and foreign produce, 

 even as the men of Gunter among the rich ingredients 

 of the matrimonial cake. Regard, too, the perfect 

 drainage provided for these plants ; no chronic 

 saturation, dangerous to life, as all dropsies are ; no 

 perpetual conflict between air and water, but each 

 exercising its function in peace. And yet many a 

 man who knows all this and practises it within doors 

 stands helpless and hopeless on the soil without, I 

 have walked out of houses where Orchids and stove- 

 plants, and even those hard-wooded inmates of the 

 greenhouse which so thoroughly test the plantsman's 

 skill — those Ericas, for example, which come indeed 

 from the Cape of Good Hope, but too often bring 

 dark despair — were all in admirable condition, and 

 have been told, as I stood upon soil the facsimile of 

 my own, and better, ^ W e can't grow Roses/ There 

 is only one reply, — ' You won't.' 



Because I know that Roses may be grown to 

 perfection in the ordinary garden soil, if they have 

 such a position as I have described in the preceding 

 chapter, and if that soil is cultivated — I don't mean 

 occasionally scratched with a rake and tickled with a 



