ture in general, in which that of the Rose was mentioned, with some important particulars. It stated that the Moors, who formerly conquered Spain, attached the highest value to this most beautiful of their flowers, and cultivated it with as much care as we do ourselves. "According to Abu-el-Jaïr," says the translation, "there are roses of many colors carnation white, fallow or yellow, lapis-lazuli, or sky-blue. Some are of this last color on the outside, and yellow within. In the East they are acquainted with roses which are variegated with yellow and sky-blue, the inside of the corolla being of the one color, and the outside the other. The yellow-heart is very common in Tripoli and Syria, and the blue-heart is found on the coast of Alexandria." To us, at the present day, this relation may with reason seem incredible, since amid the numerous varieties now existing, and the skill of their cultivators, we have in no instance been able to obtain a blue Rose. Abu-el-Jaïr may have ventured to state it as a fact without proper authority, for, according to M. de la Neuville, Abu-Abdallah-ebu-el-Fazel, another nearly contemporaneous author, enumerated a variety of roses without mentioning the blue. "There are," says this last author, “four varieties of roses: the first is named the Double White; it has an exquisite odor, and its cup unites more than a hundred petals: the second is the Yellow, which is of a golden color, and bright as the jonquil ; then the Purple; and lastly the flesh-colored, which is the most common of them all." Farther on the same author adds: "The number of species is supposed to be large: the Mountain or Wild; the Double, which is variegated with red and white shades; and the Chinese. The Double, however, is the most beautiful, and is composed of forty to fifty petals."

The Moors multiplied roses by all the various methods. which are employed at this day: by suckers from the root, by cuttings, by budding, and by grafting. The

pruning-knife was also freely used, in order to form regular heads.

There is a farther translation of De la Neuville from a Spanish version of the "Book of Agriculture," written by Ebu-Alwan, who lived in the twelfth century, and who, in addition to his own experience, quoted largely from some Chaldaic and Arabic writers. He states that the Moors practiced two methods of sowing the seeds of the Rose. The first was in earthen pans-a mode adapted to delicate plants; they were watered immediately after being sown, and afterward twice a week until autumn, when such care became unnecessary. The other method was sowing broadcast as grain is sown, then covering the seed-beds an inch deep with carefully sifted manure or fine mould, and giving them the requisite watering. The plants from these seed-beds did not produce flowers until the third year after their being thus prepared, and until they had been transplanted into squares or borders; such is still the case with nearly all our summer roses, the only kind the Moors appear to have possessed. They also understood the art of forcing roses. "If you wish,” says Haj, another author, "the Rose tree to bloom in autumn, you must choose one that has been accustomed to periodical waterings; you must deprive it of water entirely during the heat of summer until August, and then give it an abundance of moisture; this will hasten its growth, and cause the expansion of its flowers in great profusion, without impairing its ability to bloom the ensuing spring, as usual." "Or else," adds the same author, "in the month of October, burn the old branches to the level of the earth, moisten the soil for eight consecutive days, and then suspend the watering; alternate these periods of moisture and drought as many as five times, and probably in about sixty days, or before the end of autumn, the roots will have thrown out vigorous branches, which will in due time be loaded with flowers, without destroying the

ability of the plant to bloom again the following spring." The climate in which the Moors lived-that of Cordova, Grenada, and Seville, where the winter is very much like our weather in mid-autumn-was very favorable to the cultivation of the Rose. In this country the same results could doubtless be obtained in the Carolinas, and the experiment would be well worth trying, even in the latitude of New York. It would be no small triumph to obtain an autumnal bloom of the many beautiful varieties of French, Moss, or Provence Roses. Haj has also given the method of keeping the Rose in bud, in order to prolong its period of blooming. His process, however, is of so uncertain a character, as scarcely to merit an insertion here. The manuscript of De la Neuville also contains particular directions for propagating roses, and for planting hedges of the Eglantine, to protect the vineyards and gardens, and at the same time to serve as stocks for grafting. Nothing is omitted in the Arabian treatise which pertains to the management of this shrub; the manner of cultivating, weeding, transplanting, watering, etc., are all particularly explained. Among a variety of curious matters, it contains the process by which, for the purpose of embellishing their gardens, they produced the appearance of trees whose tops are loaded with roses. A hollow pipe, four feet long, or more, if the top was to be large, was obtained, of a well-proportioned diameter, set upright, to resemble the trunk of a tree, and filled with earth or sand in a suitable state of moisture. In the top of this pipe were planted several varieties of roses, of different colors, which, rooting freely in the earth around them, soon formed a bushy head, and represented a third-class tree, clothed with rich foliage and beautiful flowers.

This plan could now be practiced with success; and we can scarcely imagine more beautiful objects in a lawn than a number of these pipes, of various heights, single, and in groups, some low, with the small heads of the

China or Tea Roses, others high, and with the large, robust branches of the La Reine, and other Perpetuals, and others, again, planted with some delicate climbing roses, whose branches, falling down, would form a weeping tree of a most unique, graceful, and showy character. The pipes could be made of earthenware, tin, or wood, and be painted in imitation of the bark of a tree. Still better would be the trunk of a small tree, hollowed out for the purpose, which, with the bark on, would puzzle many a close observer, and which could show a luxuriant head of leaves and flowers on the most sterile soil that ever formed a lawn.

From what has been said on the culture of roses among the Moors in Spain, there can be no doubt that they had made great progress therein; and with the exception of a few statements, evidently unfounded in fact, as the grafting of the Rose on the almond, the apple, the jujube, and other trees, the little treatise translated by De la Neuville certainly contains most excellent remarks upon the culture of roses, whether we compare them with what the ancients have left us, or even with those of the various writers on Rose culture in Europe and America within the last half century.

As roses were so frequently propagated from the seed by the Moors, they must have known quite a number of varieties, exclusive of all those they had brought or obtained from the East. The Yellow Rose, unknown to us until recently, was apparently familiar to them; and the Blue Rose, of which their manuscripts speak, is now extinct, if it indeed ever existed; for amid the infinite variety of roses, of every color and shade, produced from seed in modern times, no one has yet obtained a purely Blue Rose, and its former existence may well seem to us incredible.

Besides the Moorish cultivation in Spain, the Rose has been an object of culture to a great extent in other coun

tries. It has been cultivated principally for the beauty of its flowers, but in many parts of Europe and Asia, and in the north of Africa, its culture has been pursued for commercial purposes. Of its abundance in Palestine, some conception may be formed from the statement of travelers, that they have not only seen them wild and in great profusion in the vicinity of Jerusalem, but have found them in hedges, intermingled with pomegranate trees. Doubday states that, when the Eastern Christians made one of their processions in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, which continued some two hours, many persons were present with sacks full of rose petals, which they threw by handfuls on the people, and in such immense quantities, that many were covered with them, and they were scattered all over the pavement. In Syria and Persia it has been cultivated from a very early period, and the ancient name of the former, Suristan, is said to signify the land of roses. Damascus, Cashmere, Barbary, and Fayoum in Egypt, all cultivated the Rose extensively for its distilled oil or essence. Very little is extant respecting the culture of the Rose in the middle ages, but that it was cultivated and valued is known by its having been worn by knights at the tournament, as an emblem of their devotion to grace and beauty. According to Loudon, "Ludovico Verthema, who traveled in the East in 1503, observed that Tæssa was particularly celebrated for roses, and that he saw a great quantity of these flowers at Calicut." The Rose is to this day also extensively cultivated in India, and for commercial purposes perhaps in greater abundance than is now known in any other country. Bishop Heber states that "Ghazepoor is celebrated throughout India for the wholesomeness of its air and the beauty and extent of its rose gardens. The Rose-fields, which occupy many hundred acres in the neighborhood, are described as, at the proper season, extremely beautiful. They are cultivated for distillation and for making