AUGUST. 
227 
former a few would be just the thing for you. If you can put your 
hand on such secure them, though at double the price of the former, and 
shorten back each shoot one-third, and also any laterals which may 
have grown ; these will make strong plants, certain to produce a larger 
crop than the year-old trees. The plants must remain until October, 
wdien, as soon as the leaf shows signs of getting ripe and falling off, 
they will have to be taken up, brought home, and potted, on which we 
shall write hereafter. Bear in mind, the sooner in August you cut back 
the plants, the greater chances you have of obtaining fruit-buds ; so, if 
you mean to commence, set about the matter at once—-procrastination 
means failure in this instance. 
Having secured your trees, set about procuring as much sound loatti 
as will serve to pot your stock; good heavy top-spit from a common or 
roadside, dug at once and stacked up in an open place, will become in good 
condition by October, when all that will be required will be to mix a 
very little rotten manure with it, or a little road earth, if the soil prove 
too heavy. You will also require a certain number of 10 or 12 inch 
pots. 
R. T. 0. 
{To he continued.) 
THE ROSE SHOW AT SOUTH KENSINGTON. 
Six weeks ago the hand which writes this article was dangling idly 
over the side of a boat in the pale green waters of “ clear, placid 
Leman.” The boat was returning from Chillon to Vevay, and the pro¬ 
prietor of the hand was ruminating about Byron and about Bonnivard, 
that poor “ Prisoner of Chillon,” of whom Byron sang, trying to imagine 
what his sensations must have been, when, after six years in his double 
dungeon of wall and wave, he was delivered by the bravery of the men 
of Berne, and brought out of his living sepulchre into the glorious sun¬ 
light of heaven. As his sight must have been wholly impotent to sus¬ 
tain “the bickerings of the noontide blaze,” so must his spirit have 
shrunk and trembled in the great amazement of his sudden gladness, 
and in the strange perplexity of his new-born hopes. At first, he must 
have been quite unable to realise his freedom, or to believe in himself. 
‘ A month went by, and then my own feelings were somewhat akin to 
Bonnivard’s. I, too, passed from a scene of dreariness and desolation 
into an arena of loveliness and life, for I went from the burial-ground 
of my dead Rose-trees to the brilliant assembly of living beauties in the 
conservatory of the Royal Horticultural Society at Kensington. Bonni¬ 
vard himself, when that prisoner of Chillon became a free man with 
the chill off, could not have been more bewildered by his bliss; and as 
for blinking, there has been nothing like it, I am sure, since the^ days 
when we boys were wont to inflict upon a touchy old spinster, knitting 
at the window opposite our school, the dazzling torture of the looking- 
glass. My Rosarium was strewed like a battle-field with dead Generals 
—Castellan and Jacqueminot, Simpson and Pelissier among them; 
Field Marshal the Duke of Cambridge made no sign; great Princes 
