MOTTO FOR THE WEEK: 
The Eose doth deserve the chiefest and most principall place among all floures whatso 
ever .”—John Gerard. 
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EDITORIAL NOTES . 
Time of Roses. 
It is the time of Roses ! A fit time it is 
for the Special Rose Number of The 
Gardening World to appear. To attempt 
to paint the Rose is proverbially vain labour, 
'ana if colours fail to set forth the Rose’s 
proud perfections, what pale shades must 
words portray. The earliest writers of 
antiquity praised the Rose. Herodotus 
speaks of the double Rose; Stesichorus, 
fcappho, Anacreon, Antipator and other 
ancient Greek writers all celebrate the 
beauty of this famous flower. 
Legends of the Rose. 
The ancients sometimes fabled that the 
red Rose was oiiginally white, but received 
a rosy hue from blood drawn by a thorn 
from the foot of the goddess Yenus, who 
was hastening to the aid of the wounded 
Adonis. These old writers, regarding the 
Rose as the symbol of silence as well as of 
love and joy, frequently represented Cupid 
as offering one to Harpocrates, the god of 
silence. From this idea has sprung the 
phrase sub rosa, applied to any communi¬ 
cation not to be repeated, and for this 
reason, it is stated, it war frequently placed 
on the confessional boxes in Roman Catholic 
churches. 
From Cradle to Grave. 
Rose trees were employed by both the 
Greeks and Romans to decorate graves, and 
several instances are noted of Rose gardens 
having been bequeathed by their proprietors 
for the purpose of furnishing Howeis for 
their tombs. These practices are still 
carried on at the present day, and practically 
Roses are used by men and women to 
celebrate all sorts of occasions from the 
prattling infant in the cradle to the last or 
final function in connection with the decora¬ 
tion of the grave. Readers will still remem¬ 
ber the Rose planted over Omar Khayyam’s 
grave, and likewise the Rose that was 
planted over Gordon’s grave at Khartoum, 
both of which, if not entirely uprooted, 
have certainly been plundered for the sake 
of specimens to plant elsewhere. 
Roses in Ancient London. 
It is a curious fact in connection with the 
furnishing of flowers for tombs that, in 1653, 
in the City of London, one Edward Rose 
left a sum of money to be expended in the 
purchase of an acre of land for the poor of 
the village of Barnes, in Surrey, on the 
coadition that a number of Rose trees 
planted on his grave in that village should 
in perpetuity be well tended by the villagers. 
Another strange and little-known London inci¬ 
dent in connection with Roses was the grant 
by Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely, to Christopher 
(afterwards Sir Christopher) Hatton of a 
great part of Ely House, Holborn, for a long 
period of years on condition that the tenant 
paid on Midsummer Day a red Rose for the 
gatehouse and garden, the Bishop ieserving 
to himself and successors the right of free 
access through the gatehouse into the 
gardens, and of gathering twenty bushels of 
Roses yearly. 
Roses in Ancient London Suburbs. 
In 1597, when John Gerard wrote his 
great “ Herbal,” Holborn was merely a 
suburb of London, but that boundary has 
been shifted westward, and practically to 
all points of the com pa s. for many miles 
further out than Holborn to-day. AY riting 
from his house in Holborn within the suburbs 
of London on 1st December, 1597, Gerard 
'enumerates eighteen distinct Roses that 
were grown in his day, and figures most of 
them. These include the White Rose, the 
Red Rose, the Provence or Damask Rose, 
the lesser Provence Rose, the Rose without 
prickles, and the Great Holland Rose. The 
latter must have been a king of Roses in its 
day if the figure represents its exact pro¬ 
portions and number of petals. It had, no 
doubt, represented the advanced stage 
l e iched by florists amongst Roses in those 
days. The White and Red Rose3 were 
already associated with the English crown, 
as Gerard was writing posterior to 
the time of the Wars of the Roses. 
Geiard expressed his opinion that the 
White Rose was closely similar to the 
Provence or Damask Rose, and, assuming 
his prem'ses to be correct, the White Rose, 
the emblem of England, must surely have 
been a variety of the Damask Rose, notwith- 
st ending the discussions that have taken 
place within recent years in order to prove 
what really was the English Rose. In 
addition to the above, Gerard also mentioned 
the single, the double, and the great Musk 
Roses, the velvet Rose, the yellow and the 
double yellow Rose, a3 well as the single 
and double cinnamon Rose. These, in some 
form or other, are still cultivated, and 
possibly no improvement has been made 
upon the Musk, Yellow and Cinnamon 
Roses compated with their best forms in 
those days. Some of them have, of course, 
been hybridised with other Roses in more 
recent times, and although improvements 
from a garden point of view, they would not 
be entirely the original species, owing to 
the facility by which different species of 
Rose can be hybridised artificially. The 
Musk (Rosa moshcata), the Yellow (R. lutea), 
and the Cinnamon Rose (R. cinnamome >) 
were all described as garden Roses, and 
where they still exist in specific form, 
practically remain garden Roses pure and 
simple, according to the classification of the' 
National Rose Society. 
Wild Roses in Olden Times. 
Gerard enumerates a number of wild or 
native Roses which were so highly appre 
ciated as to be cultivated in London and 
other gardens even in his day. These in¬ 
cluded the Sweet Brier (R. rubiginosa), the 
double Sweet Brier, the Burnet or Pimpinel 
Rose, and the Brier Rose. The latter is the 
only one which was not appreciated in 
gardens, presumably on account of its being 
so common. From his description of it, we 
presume this was the Dog Rose as under¬ 
stood in those days, but which, to the 
uninitiated, must have been a very composite 
unit or species, as it still continues to be in the 
minds of people generally. Evidently it was 
much admired and appreciated in the wild 
state even then, for Gerard says that “ even 
children with great delight eat the berries 
thereof when they be ripe ; make chains and 
other pretty gewgawes of the fruit; cookes and 
