December 31. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
163 
I would be content with one ldnd, the crimson. I tried 
to cross the Crimson Boursault in 1840, 47, and 48, a 
few flowers each year, but I did not get a single seed. 
The season was too hot in .1846, and the blossoms 
dropped prematurely; but under more favourable cir¬ 
cumstances I failed also, and I do not recollect having 
ever seen ripe seeds on it; still I must not give a de¬ 
cided opinion on it, as a breeder, from so slight an 
acquaintance. Dan any kind reader help me from his 
own experience ? We have not another Rose from 
which it would be more desirable to obtain cross seed¬ 
lings. I am almost sure that it ought to be pruned 
before hard frost sets in, when it is grown in good rich 
soil, because it keeps on growing very late, and the 
unripe wood is so soft that it seldom escapes from in¬ 
jury by frost. It is not a very good one to bud others 
on, from this liability to get frost-bitten. It is the only 
Boursault worth a south wall. 
Ayrshire Roses. —Out of a full collection of these, 
planted on a very indifferent soil thirteen years next 
spring, Rose Angle is now the best and healthiest of 
them; Ruga is much stronger in the old wood than 
Angle, but the young wood is not so healthy, nor does it 
bloom so well. Splendens and Rennet's Seedling are the 
best bloomers. There have been a great number of 
seedlings raised from this section by different growers, 
but they were too much alike, and too close to their 
parent stock, to make a distinct show; and, like the 
Scarlet Geraniums, one may meet with a seedling 
climbing Rose, which is much praised in one place, and 
much condemned in the next place you call at. The 
Ayrshire Queen is the best coloured and most distinct 
Rose in this group ; it is a dark purple or crimson Rose, 
and makes a very beautiful standard with its long 
slender branches hanging down on all sides; it is also 
well suited for festooning, aud would give a good relief 
to a collection of the light-coloured evergreen Roses, 
besides agreeing with them in habit. I never attempted 
to get cross seedlings from this rose ; but it is one of 
great promise, and we want more variety of colours in 
all the sections of climbing Roses. Out of many seed¬ 
lings which grow much after the manner of the Ayr- 
shires, Madame d'Arblay, nearly a pure white, and 
Sir John Sebright, a red flower, are the two best and 
most distinct; they may also be used in festoons, or 
w'orked for weeping standards. 
This finishes my list of very hardy climbing Roses. 
The whole of them will grow on any soil, however poor, 
and they would flourish on heavy wet clay, where other 
Roses could hardly exist. Their habit is so wild aud 
briar-like, that they would soon stamp the character of 
any rough piece of ground which one wished to devote 
to the growth of such plants as are not fit to be admitted 
into the regular shrubbery borders of the present day. 
For the sake of distinction, we gardeners call such places 
The Wilderness, and in large places the wilderness 
comes in very useful by way of contrast to the more 
dressed parts, besides the opportunity it affords us to 
prove seedlings of hardy plants from different parts of 
the world, which do not appear to be worthy of more 
special treatment. Nothing coi»es amiss for “ The 
Wildernessit is the true situation for all the Scotch 
Roses, for the yellow Persian and Austrian Roses, and 
for the Sweet-briars. 
The Mush Roses should also be planted in the wilder¬ 
ness. They say Musk Roses smell of Musk, but I could 
never prove that; they blossom in the autumn, however, 
and keep green to Christmas or longer, and on that 
account are as useful as any of the Ayrshires. The old 
white single Musk Rose never fails to blossom in very 
large clusters in the autumn, but one. seldom sees it 
now-a-days; yet it would be worth while to try experi¬ 
ments with it and some of the Noisettes, with which it 
is nearly akin, and also with Sir John Sebright and the 
Ayrshire Queen, to see if we could get more varieties of 
these sorts to bloom in the autumn, if only for the 
wilderness. 
We shall never be able to excel the French growers 
in raising the finer description of Roses, but our hardy 
climbers are still within our reach, and our climate 
seems more favourable for experiments among them 
than that of the continent, and it seems now a settled 
question, that climate has much to do in ruling the ex¬ 
periments of the cross-breeder, as Dr. Herbert asserted 
long since from his own experience in rearing seedling 
bulbs, more particularly those from the Gladioli. When 
he failed to produce a scarlet-flowering seedling of 
Gladiolus by the pollen of a variety, removed two 
degrees from the original species, the species itself not 
being scarlet, but the variety nearly so, he accounted for 
his failure on one of two causes—-either “the disposition 
of the perianth (the flower) to follow preferably the type 
of the male,” or the influence “ of our climate to pro¬ 
duce the less-brilliantly coloured varieties of plants 
which are derived from warmer latitudes.” The first of 
these surmises seems to be perfectly proved in the 
instance of the florist’s pelargoniums. All their indus¬ 
try and ingenuity in crossing varieties have, hitherto, 
failed them to produce a true scarlet seedling, because, 
as it would appear, the varieties they work with 'have 
not come down from a scarlet type. The dark blotches 
in the upper petals of nine-tenths of their seedlings, were 
brought in by Reniforme, and although it might seem a 
triumph to have got rid of these blotches or dark spots, 
as in Rising-sun aud Sun-rise, &c., they are still groping 
in the dark for a scarlet in that strain, and before they 
shall ever obtain it they must go back forty or fifty 
years, and begin afresh with Fulgidum and Sanguineum; 
but before they will succeed in producing this race, with 
flowers as large as those of their present magnum 
bonums, we shall have hybrid perpetual evergreen climb¬ 
ing Roses, with flowers as large as Barron Prevost, and 
may be as high-coloured as Geant des Batailles itself, if 
there is any truth in the second assertion respecting the 
suitability of our climate, though that is not favourable 
to the production of high colours among plants from a 
warmer climate ; it may be otherwise with Ayrshires and 
Dundee Ramblers, whose types are indigenous to high 
northern climes. The Ayrshire Queen and Sir John 
Sebright originated, I believe, with Mr. Rivers. If he 
could thus manage, with the air all round his nursery 
grounds loaded with mixed pollen, what might a private 
amateur not expect if he were to go earnestly to cross 
our best climbing Roses, or, if he were not ambitious 
about high colours, let him take courage from Madame 
d' Arblay, the finest and most luxuriant seedling yet 
reared among the White varieties. There were some 
heart-burnings about the origin of this fine climber, and 
not without abundant reasons, seeing that it was passed 
off as a French seedling, and saddled with a French 
name, although raised by a worthy friend of mine, Mr. 
Wells, lately of Red Leaf, in Kent, and as good a Rose 
grower as any Frenchman that ever lived. 
Another way by which all these hardy climbers 
would look exceedingly well is, to have them planted 
against single trees, or against trees in front of a group, 
or in front of a plantation, or indeed against any trees 
that were not too much in the shade, for no Roses like to 
be altogether in the shade ; then to train or tie them to 
the stems, and let them ramble all over the branches, 
without giving them the least pruning. I have seen 
some of them tried this way and they looked just like 
wildings, and, if possible, more beautiful than in fes¬ 
toons. Sometimes they would make shoots from ten 
to fifteen feet long in one season, and bang down 
perpendicularly, like so many strings, and next 
year these would be covered with flowers from top 
to bottom, and after that we used to carry them across 
