36 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Director of the Botanic Garden at Brussels, Francois Cr£pin, who 

 between the years 1869 and 1882, in addition to many smaller essays, 

 published his Primitiae Monographiae RosarumX, or materials for the 

 history of the Rose, an epitome of which he presented to the Rose 

 Conference of this Society in 1889 under the title of a Sketch of a New 

 Classification of Roses. This was printed in volume xi of the Society's 

 Journal, and reappeared with certain modifications in the French 

 Journal des Roses in 1891, from which it was reprinted in pamphlet 

 form in the same year. We are aware of the difficulty of fixing any 

 limits of finality in the botanical treatment of a subject like the Rose, 

 but both in this country and on the Continent of Europe Crepin's 

 work bids fair to hold for a long time its present position of importance. 

 Any allusion to the present-day botany of the Rose would also be 

 incomplete without a reference to the magnificent work of Miss 

 Willmott, The Genus Rosa, which has appeared within the last two 

 years. The large number of excellent coloured plates, combined with 

 the mass of botanical and cultural information furnished by the text 

 accompanying them, render this without doubt the most valuable 

 iconography of the Rose that has appeared since Redout£'s Les Roses, 

 and although in a few instances we may regret to find new names in 

 place of those to which we have become accustomed, no doubt the 

 author considered that there were good reasons for the alterations. 



Of historical works of the period the most important are Joret's 

 La Rose dans V antiquite et au moyen age (Paris, 1892), and Belmont's 

 Dictionnaire historique et artistique de la Rose (Melun, 1896) ; the former 

 author invests his subject with a lightness and charm which render 

 the book delightful reading throughout, whilst Mr. Belmont's Diction- 

 ary is valuable as a work of reference. I should also like to mention a 

 small work which appears to be little known, and which I think must 

 have been printed in London about the middle of the last century. It 

 is entitled An Essay on the Mythological and Symbolical History of 

 the Rose, from the German, but neither author's nor translator's name is 

 given, although no doubt they could be ascertained without great 

 difficulty. This essay deals with the history, cultivation, and use of 

 the Rose amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the author 

 has succeeded in collecting many facts and references which I do not 

 remember to have seen elsewhere recorded. 



From the many books that have issued from the press in this 

 country during recent years having for their object the encourage- 

 ment of the culture of the Rose in gardens, it would seem somewhat 

 invidious to make a selection where nearly all have their special points 

 of excellence. In point of priority the late Dean Hole's Book about 

 Roses, the first edition of which was published in 1869, will come first, 

 and of subsequent works that have obtained an extended circulation 

 I may mention the Rev. A. Foster Melliar's Book of the Rose, Miss 

 Jekyll's and Mr. Mawley's Roses for English Gardens, the Rev. J. 

 H. Pemberton's Roses, Miss Kingsley's Roses and Rose Growing* 

 and E. T. Cook's Rose Growing Made Easy. 



