AUTUMNAL 110SLS. 
83 
cause if the situation is much exposed and the soil very poor, 
the dog-rose is very stinted, and soon ceases to grow. Thus 
roses upon dog-rose standards are, in such situations and soils, 
very expensive to keep up, and they never make a good appear¬ 
ance or have fine flowers. The soil may be improved artificially 
and brought to any degree of richness that may be required ; 
but nothing except shelter will improve the situation. The best 
of all shelters are belts or clumps of timber, and even these grow 
slow in such situations, and if composed of shrubs and broad- 
leafed trees they should be defended against the winds, by larches 
or some others whose natural habits are in exposed situations, 
and which therefore can better endure the blasts. If it is wished 
to cultivate, and have in the greatest perfection that the situa¬ 
tion will admit, some of the finer autumnal roses—indeed many 
of them—it is necessary to attend to this property of the dog- 
rose : for roses from dry climates, where the soil is apt to be ex¬ 
hausted by heat, thrive best in the situations where the dog-rose 
thrives most. Most of them are more showy when budded on 
the dog-rose than when on their natural stems, but if soil rich 
enough for the dog-rose cannot be found, they should be grown 
upon their own stem only. It must be borne in mind that in 
roses—and indeed, in all plants which root in the ground, the 
adaptation of the soil must be to the root or stem—to the dog-rose 
of course, in the case of roses budded upon it, and not to the 
roses so budded. By properly attending to those circumstances, 
roses may be grown to great perfection, in a great variety of 
situations, indeed, almost anywhere, unless the winter’s frost 
is sufficient to kill them, and they are not protected from it. As 
the standard of a budded rose is part of the woody portion of 
the compound solvent, and not of the flowering portion, a dog- 
rose standard imparts some degree of its own vigour to the wood 
of what is budded upon it, without in the least altering the 
character of the flowers. But we must now say something of 
the distinctions of those leading groups of autumnal roses which 
are known by different names. 
In doing this, however, we must bear in mind that of all groups 
of plants those of roses are the most indefinite. They hybridize 
more easily by art than almost any other plants, and many of 
them hybridize naturally. Indeed, in them, and in all plants, 
if there were no natural hybrids, art would have no beginning, 
