i64 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



at other times the petals are all withered before they 

 expand themselves, and form the flower. For this 

 purpose, many have recommended to plant them 

 against north walls, and in the coldest and moistest 

 part of the garden, because, as the contexture of their 

 petals is so delicate, they will be then in less danger 

 of suffering by the heats of the sun, which seem to 

 wither and burn them as often as they expand them- 

 selves. But I could not observe without wonder 

 what I never saw before — t,e., in the parching and 

 dry summer of 1762, all my Double Yellow Roses, 

 both in the nursery lines and elsewhere, in the 

 hottest of the most southern exposures and dry 

 banks, everywhere all over my w^hole plantation, 

 flowered clear and fair/ Here, in my opmion, the 

 latter paragraph contradicts and disproves the former, 

 showing us that, so far from the Yellow Provence 

 Rose being burned and withered by the sun, we 

 have only now and then, in an exceptional season, 

 sunshine sufficient to bring it to perfection. I 

 have given it my best sites and soils, but, with 

 all my anxious supervision, I have never succeeded 

 in persuading this tender emigrant to stay. 



More kindly and gracious is the Miniature or 

 Pompon Provence, always bringing us an early 

 but too transient supply of those lovely little 

 flowers which were the 'baby Roses' and the ^pony 



