PREFACE 
The book which is here offered to the public is the outcome of many 
years’ study of the genus Rosa. Originally it consisted of notes put 
together for my own use which, but for the encouragement of friends, 
might never have grown into a book. 
Two works are pre-eminent among the many which have been 
written on Roses : these are Redoutffs Les Roses, published in 1802- 
1820, and John Lindley’s Rosarum Monographia , published in 1820: 
the former is in the main a collection of beautiful drawings of Roses 
chosen for their beauty ; the latter is a systematic study of the genus. 
Redoute s Roses is the most beautifully illustrated book which I 
know. I11 delicacy ol drawing, in excellence of colouring and in fidelity 
to nature, it surpasses every other flower-book. The drawings are 
portraits, at once precise and artistic, of the most beautiful ol the Roses 
at that time grown in French gardens. They are not intended to 
illustrate a systematic account, though the text, written afterwards by 
Thory, who was a botanist, in addition to descriptions of the Roses 
drawn, deals to some extent with the genus as a whole. 
John Lindley, on the other hand, was a laborious writer, of vast 
botanical attainments and of unwearying patience. Most of the books 
on Roses before his time contained more or less vague and inadequate 
accounts of the genus, with little or no attempt at systematic treatment. 
Lindley was the first to perceive the true proportions of the subject, 
and his work has lightened the labours of all subsequent students. 
It is not a little remarkable that this careful and erudite mono- 
graph was the production of a youth who had not completed his 
twentieth year, a circumstance which seems to me greatly to increase 
the admiration due to a work in itself so excellent. 
