The Old Blush Monthly is very hardy, and will grow almost anywhere. Planted on herbaceous borders, or with other shrubs, it is very effective. It makes a handsome specimen bush, and will form a good hedge. All the pruning it requires is the thinning out of the old wood from time to time and tipping the strong midsummer growth. No pruning is necessary to make it flower; it will do that better if left to itself. As it gives a succession of flowers right down to Christmas, and sometimes beyond, all the cutting should be left until the spring.

The Crimson Chinas are much less vigorous in growth and are quite unsuitable as specimen plants. To obtain the best results, grow them in groups or masses. Fabvier, for instance, one of the very best of the Crimson Chinas and sent out by Laffay in 1832, if grown in this way is most attractive. In the spring, cut out all the old wood from the centre of the plant, leaving about three or four of the strongest shoots, as far apart from each other as possible. By the middle of June the first crop of roses will commence to bloom, to be quickly followed by successional crops well into October; great heads, bearing flowers in all stages of development, from the pointed bronzy green bud to the full blown rose. A row of Fabvier --the plants about one foot apart-one mass of deep crimson semi-double flowers with here and there a petal streaked with white, the glorious colour heightened by the golden stamens of the expanded blooms, is most charming. For this rose, if for no other, the great name of Laffay will long be remembered. Fabvier is always gay, no matter how wet the weather. As soon as the

petals and stamens fall, which they do simultaneously, the round fruit begins to develop. A rose will not make seed and fresh growth at one and the same time. The seed-heads must, therefore, be removed at once, and the plant will then send up fresh flowering wood. Treated in this way, Fabvier will bloom continuously.

The China Rose of the crimson type is very active, and has but a brief sleeping period. It prefers a light soil left undisturbed, well dressed with cow manure when first planted. At one time it, together with the Old Blush type, was the only rose that flowered well into the autumn, and in consequence was highly esteemed, notwithstanding its lack of perfume.

THE TEA-SCENTED ROSE (Rosa indica odorata)

In the year 1810 a little passenger from China, dressed in pink, came on a visit to England, where she. resided for some time in single blessedness. Poor thing, she could not all at once become acclimatised, and seldom was seen out of doors. And then, just fourteen years later, another Chinese native appeared on the scene, and he was attired in a charming yellow costume. There was nothing very remarkable about these two foreign visitors; they were small and not very strong, nevertheless they were destined one day to create a revolution in the society in which they moved. At first no one took inuch notice of them until the arrival of a Frenchman, who, being a man of keen observation, saw something attractive in them, and, becoming acquainted, it was not long before they accompanied him back to France, where they married and settled down, feeling more at home there than they

had done in England. A numerous offspring was the result of this marriage, and their progeny, increasing through successive generations, have travelled far and wide, so that at the present day there is scarcely any part of the civilised world where some of the family are not known and cordially received. And, what is most remarkable, the descendants of these two Chinese visitors, up to ten years ago, kept themselves to themselves, and, like Israel of old, seldom marrying outside their own family circle, preserved intact their racial characteristics. Of Chinese extraction, they became naturalised in France, and are never more at home than in the land of their adoption. This is not a fairy tale, nor is it a page of private history; it is but the simple story of the origin and progress of the Tea-scented Rose.

The original Blush Tea-scented Rose came from China in 1810, and in 1824 Mr. Parkes brought from the same country the Yellow Tea-scented Rose. Although introduced first into England, they were soon in the hands of the French rose-growers, the Yellow Tea becoming exceedingly popular in Paris, where small pot plants of it were sold by hundreds in the markets. These two

roses are the parents of the great family of Tea-scented Roses. The Blush variety was fertilised with the pollen of the Yellow-the latter rarely producing a variety worth notice and the seedlings obtained are of the colour of their common ancestors, blush and yellow. There are one or two exceptions to the rule, probably owing to a strain of the Crimson China.

The rise of the Tea-scented Rose dates from 1830, but for the next twenty years good varieties were few, the

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