230 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



sufficient attention. Here the Bosa arvensis was a low trailing 

 shrub, but in Austria and Germany it grew up to the top of 

 very large trees. The rose moscha ta of India — the magnificent 

 representative of the arvensis — was a plant which had been used 

 by gardeners because it had produced some very good hybrids, 

 its white flowers appearing on the largest trees and filling the air 

 with a powerful scent for long distances. In the Blue Mountains 

 of India was to be seen another white-centred rose of the same 

 group as Synstylce. Then there was the Bosa alpina — a rose 

 without a thorn — certainly one of the ornaments of the Euro- 

 pean Alps. Another magnificent species, and a very strong, 

 powerful grower, was the Bosa macrophylla, which grew at a 

 great elevation, With regard to the Bosa indica, it had nothing 

 to do with India proper. It was a Chinese rose, and the dis- 

 covery of this rose between India and Burmah — a place which 

 for the last twenty years had been in a most disturbed state, but 

 which, under systematic British rule, would become one of the 

 most flourishing countries — was exceedingly remarkable. There 

 were large rose gardens in Northern India — there were fields of 

 roses. The rose was cultivated on a very large scale there for the 

 purpose of making rose perfumes and rose water : and it was a 

 very remarkable fact, but it was probable that these roses were 

 not of old cultivation in India, but they were of comparatively 

 recent introduction. The rose had no true Sanscrit name, which 

 pointed to the fact that roses, which had been cultivated by the 

 Mohammedans for centuries previously, were first introduced by 

 them into India after their conquest of that country. In India, 

 in days long before the Mohammedan conquest, there were gardens, 

 and in Sanscrit songs flowers were praised, but the rose was not 

 amongst them. The first rose which seemed to have been culti- 

 vated on a large scale was the oriental damascena, which was 

 introduced probably by the Mohammedan conquerors. 



Mr. Nicholson, said, with regard to the Bosa gigantea, that 

 seeds had germinated at Kew, and that he thought it best to 

 treat it as an ordinary greenhouse plant. 



Sir Dietrich Brandis proposed a vote of thanks to the 

 President. 



Sir Alex. Arbuthxot seconded the motion. He said the 

 Conference had been a most interesting one, even to amateurs 

 like himself, and he trusted that the future of their work in the 

 cultivation of roses would be eminently practical. 



