2i6 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



must regard the selection which I have made for you 

 only as the foundation on which you are to rear your 

 Temple of Fame. You must be as anxious as 

 Norval's father to increase your stock — or rather 

 stocks — on which you may bud next summer, and 

 thus multiply your Rose-trees on the most 

 economical, and at the same time, most successful 

 system. Therefore I would advise you, if you have 

 the ambition to distinguish yourself publicly as a 

 Rosarian, to plant in November, simultaneously with 

 your Rose-trees, not less than 500 stocks. But now 

 comes a most interesting and important consideration 

 — which stocks shall we prefer for the Rose ? 



iEsop told the gardener of his master, Xanthus, 

 that ^the earth was a stepmother to those plants 

 which w^ere incorporated into her soil, but a mother to 

 those which are her own free production ; and where- 

 ever the Dog-Rose flourishes in our hedgerows — now 

 delighting our eyes with its flowers, and now scratching 

 them out with its thorns, should we follow the partridge 

 or the fox too wildly— //^^r^ the Brier is the stock for 

 the Rose, I know that, despite the dictum of ^sop, 

 our soil has been no injusta noverca to that foreign 

 Rose, which took the name of Manetti from him who 

 raised it from seed, and which was sent to Mr. Rivers, 

 more than fifty years since, by Signor Crivelli, from 

 Como. I know that the Italian refugee is acclimatised, 



