THE BOTANICAL LOOKER-OUT. 
59 
the short-lived pleasures of life—its thorns of the ever-accompanying adversities : 
hence, when the late Nabob of the Carnatic addressed Lord Clive on the injuries 
and insults he had received from the English in India, he drew a parallel between 
himself and a husbandman who had suffered strangers to enter his garden, and 
thus poetically summed up the melancholy detail,—“ The flowers of the Rose 
have fallen, and the stalk, with all its thorns, alone remains in my hand.” In 
fact, we can scarcely image to ourselves a Rose without thorns ; and Milton, to 
depict the superior ambrosial pleasure afforded by Eden, makes it abound with 
“ Flowers of all hues, and with thorn the Rose.” 
Yet it is curious that there is actually a thornless species of Alpine Rose, called 
by botanists inermis , or unarmed, from this remarkable circumstance. Another 
fact with regard to the Rose is, that the five sepals of its pitcher-shaped calyx are 
almost invariably thus arranged,—two are pinnate or bearded throughout, two 
are simple or unbearded, and one is pinnate on one side only. This gave rise to 
an old monkish enigma, which we thus translate— 
Five brothers take their stand, 
Born to the same command ; 
Two darkly bearded frown, 
Two without beards are known, 
And one sustains with equal pride 
His odd appendage on one side. 
This may be verified by reference to a Dog-Rose in any hedge, but it hardly 
applies to the Chinese or Indian Roses. In the East Roses have been ever 
especial favourites from the earliest times; beds of Roses are no poetical figure 
there; and in Persia, according to Sir R. Ker Porter, every garden and court is 
crowded with its plants; every room is fragrant with ever-replenished vases of 
them, while full-blown flowers strew every bath; and in the delicious gardens of 
Negaanistan, the eye and the smell are not only regaled by the most beautiful 
and fragrant Roses, but the ear is enchanted with the warblings of multitudes of 
Nightingales, whose notes seem to increase in melody and softness with the 
unfolding of their favourite flowers. 
Father Catron, in his History of the Mogul Empire , thus accounts for the 
origin of the celebrated Otto-of-Roses, now so esteemed as an indispensable 
appendage to a lady’s boudoir. It appears that the Princess Nourmahal, in the 
true style of Eastern voluptuousness, once filled an entire canal with Rose-water, 
upon which she made frequent sailing-excursions, in company with the Great 
Mogul. The heat of the sun causing the disengagement of the essential oil from 
the Rose-water, it was observed floating upon the surface, and thus was made the 
discovery of the essence (otto) of Roses. Near Damascus is the famous plain of 
Roses, solely dedicated to the making of the attar, which, for some miles, is 
