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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



NATIONAL EOSE CONFERENCE. 



Held in the Society's Gardens at Chiswick, 

 July 2 and 3, 1889. 



HORTICULTURAL SECTION. — July 2. 



The Conference was opened by the Very Rev. The Dean of 

 Rochester, D.D., President of the Conference, who said: — 



On a summer's evening some five-and-forty years ago, a 

 young English gentleman who had just finished his career at 

 Oxford was sauntering round his father's garden — a pretty 

 garden, full of all the old pleasant things — but he was thinking 

 more of the " weed " between his lips than of the flowers around 

 him. Classical literature, and field sports, and pretty faces, and 

 graver matters than these had caused that love of flowers innate 

 in all the children of " the grand old gardener " to pale its 

 ineffectual fire. He was blind to the glory that was all around 

 him. Suddenly — I am telling you literal simple facts — suddenly, 

 he, or I, for I was he, and I know to a few inches the very spot — 

 suddenly he saw the glow of the western sun upon a rose. It 

 was a Gallica Rose, and the splendour of its crimson hues 

 caused him to say from his heart, "Oh, how beautiful!" I 

 could have almost knelt— I say "almost" because I was in 

 dinner dress, and Poole's expensive garments were not adapted 

 for kneeling on gravel walks ; and therefore, I satisfied myself, 

 after I had made obeisance, by visiting every other rose which I 

 could find in the garden. There were not many in those days. 

 There was the old Cabbage — what a name to give a sweet lovely 

 rose ! — you might almost as well call it Bubble-and-squeak. 

 There was the Moss Rose, the Rosa Mundi, commonly called the 

 York and Lancaster ; there was the little Fairy Rose, that we 

 used to call Doll's Rose ; there was the Crimson Damask, and 

 I am not quite certain whether this rose I now have in my 

 coat — Lee's Perpetual — was there or not. There were a few 

 named varieties which our zealous old gardener had persuaded 

 my father to buy, and these were considered the novelties and 



