NATIONAL ROSE CONFERENCE. 



213 



limit may be yet within our reach. They lie packed away in the 

 unexplored storehouse of Nature, just as the triumphs of the 

 sculptor's art have been said to lie enfolded in the yet 

 unfashioned marble, ready to stand forth at the call of man, and 

 reward the labours of intelligent quest. 



Monsieur Yibert, who in 1815 saved the whole of Monsieur 

 Descemets' seedlings from the ravages of the allied armies which 

 then encompassed Paris, by removing them to a distance, was 

 an ardent enthusiast in Eose culture. He cultivated the Eose 

 for profit as a nurseryman, but he has left behind him some 

 essays on the Eose which show him to have been a man of a 

 very intelligent and thoughtful mind, and indeed of no mean 

 literary ability. 



This is what he says of the improvement of the Eose : — 



" Our knowledge is still in its infancy, and I am strongly 

 convinced that one day for the discovery of varieties of the 

 greatest interest, we shall have to owe more to art than to 

 unassisted nature. The most fortunate, the most expert, will be 

 the man who knows Nature best, and it is less in the caprices of 

 chance than in a profound study of the subject that we should 

 seek the elements of success. It is in the crossing of species of 

 a very opposite character, or of varieties very unlike, that hope is 

 to be found of probable success ; departing from the beaten 

 paths, we must study and interrogate Nature with perseverance, 

 and constrain her by force of art to new productions." 



Monsieur Vibert was right. I have seen enough myself to 

 believe that there is hardly any limit to the new races which 

 may be produced by cross-breeding, as it is called. And this 

 brings me to the principal object of this paper. The new 

 varieties which are now yearly raised are not, with rare 

 exceptions, the result of the artificial application of the pollen of 

 one plant to the stigmas of another, which is what I mean by 

 cross-breeding or hybridising. 



So understood, hybridising is not practised on any systematic 

 and extended scale, either in this country or in France. By far 

 the most able and scientific modern book on the culture of the 

 Eose which I have met with is that published by Monsieur 

 Eugene Forney. 



This is his description of the culture of the Eose in France at 

 the present day : — 



G 2 



