SCENTED ROSES. 
123 
had none but fragrant Roses, so that instinctively, not entirely satisfied 
with beauty, we require for full gratification fragrance also. Other 
flowers may delight us by their gorgeous colourings (no one ever puts 
a Dahlia to the nose to ascertain if it has perfume) , but hand a Rose to 
a friend and almost invariably the test is immediately applied, with 
obvious disappointment if expectations are not realized. You may 
remember Foster Melliar's story of the old lady to whom when visiting 
his garden in company with other villagers he handed a flower of 
'Baroness Rothschild,' and her exclamation " Why, they have sniffed 
all the scent out of this 'ere one." I notice that a writer in the last 
Rose Annual describes it as " the savage taste for the aromatic," and 
asks " What is this sense of smell that we put such a fantastic value 
upon it in connection with the Rose ? " But is it a " savage taste " ? 
And do we put upon it a fantastic value ? 
When practically all Roses possessed fragrance it was simply taken 
for granted. Now that a different condition of affairs has arisen, it is 
not surprising to find people deploring that while immense advances 
have been made by cultivators and hybridists many of our modern 
Roses have little or no scent. Some even make more sweeping state- 
ments, based fortunately on hasty generalization. Because certain 
popular Roses are scentless, for instance ' Frau Karl Druschki,' many 
have jumped to the conclusion and airily asserted that "modern Roses 
have no scent." While I am free to admit that a number of our most 
beautiful modern Roses are nearly if not quite scentless, I can readily 
point to many exceptions, as for example ' Madame Abel Chatenay/ 
'Richmond,' 'General MacArthur,' ' Pharisaer/ 'Hugh Dickson/ 
'Lieutenant Chaure,' ' Mrs. Bertram Walker,' ' Lady Alice Stanley/ 
' Ophelia,' to name only a few. 
To explain the present position it is necessary for me to trace 
briefly the evolution of present-day Roses. From the wild species 
in many parts of the world all our modern Roses have been derived. 
Who first planted the Rose in cultivated ground must ever remain a 
matter for conjecture. Some degree of development must have taken 
place in very early days, for there are numerous references to the Rose 
in classical writings, and 2,000 years ago Sappho, a Greek poetess, 
designated it the Queen of Flowers. Then we read of the immense 
sums spent on Rose blooms in Roman times by Cleopatra and Nero, 
who perhaps are among the luxurious and disorderly persons referred 
to by Ruskin. A point of special interest to which I here make 
passing reference is that the Egyptians and the Romans appear to 
have had autumn-flowering Roses, whereas we in England had none 
but summer-flowering varieties till the last century. Whether this 
second flowering was natural or induced by climate and cultivation it 
is impossible to say. There is, however, no question that their Roses 
were scented. 
Practically all our modern cultivated Roses owe their origin in some 
degree to Rosa gallica, R. centifolia, R. damascena, and R. indica. Rosa 
gallica, the French Rose, is a native of France, and grows abundantly in 
