328 
THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
health ; for above all things we want vigour in roses, and debilitated 
parents are not likely to produce robust progeny. Every inferior 
rose that can be got at within a mile of the seed ground should be 
grubbed up and burnt, and consequently the seed grower must purify 
his own garden of such, and that will be no hardship, for the best roses, 
anywhere and anyhow, must be better than the worst. In the first 
place the selection should comprise all the first-class typical roses ; 
next all the most distinct and beautiful of the several classes. The 
collection should he comprehensive, save and except in this respect, 
that every variety known to have a weakly constitution, however 
highly esteemed for its flowers, should be carefully excluded. We 
have too many weak-habited varieties already, and the English raiser 
should as carefully as possible guard against adding to their number. 
In selecting for the plantation, any kind of roots will do, and it 
might be a saving of expense to take from a nursery all the ugly 
plants of the best kinds, because the shape and altitude are matters 
of no consequence at all, if the object is seed-saving merely. 
It is an important matter to ensure that the seed is ripe before it 
is gathered, and on this point mistakes may easily be made. It 
happens with heps as with grapes, that they often acquire a fine 
colour in advance of perfect ripening, and, as a rule, a hep is not ripe 
when it is of a brilliant red colour, and if the harvesting of good seed 
is our object we must wait until the heps are black, or nearly so. 
It may be proper to remark here, that the seed-producing trees 
should have a little but not much care. Above all things they must 
be kept in good health, and any that show a persistent tendency to 
mildew should be rooted out and burnt. They will require no more 
pruning than suffices to keep them in order, for the more flowers 
they produce the better. The novice may reasonably suppose that 
better seed could be obtained from a few first-class flowers, than 
from allowing the flowers to come freely and to lose somewhat of 
their substance and doubleness. But the fact is just otherwise. By 
a somewhat starving system of cultivation, which results in render- 
ing many first-class varieties “ goggle-eyed,” through deficiency of 
petals, we secure a fine sample of seed, from which, in all probability, 
there will result a fair proportion of seedlings characterised by ex- 
cessive fulness, for the doubling tendency is in the strain, and will 
come out at last if encouraged by good cultivation. 
The heps having been gathered may be treated in several difie- 
rent ways. The most simple is to stratify them in layers with sand 
in a damp place, and leave them until March, and then to rub out 
the seeds and sow in the open ground in rows two feet apart, the 
seeds being six inches apart in the row. Another simple mode of 
dealing with them is to sow the complete heps in rows as soon as 
gathered, without any attempt to separate the seeds from the pulp. 
This is Nature’s way of raising seedling roses, and although it is a 
rough way, it has this advantage, that the seedling plants have their 
proper vigour, for the seed is buried as soon as it is ripe. The result 
of this method is that the seedlings rise in clusters, and therefore the 
heps should be put at least a foot apart, in rows two feet apart. 
Another method of procedure is to break open the heps and 
