over the soil, there will happen what took place
in the time of Virgil: Sponte sua sandys
pascentes vertiet agnos (the sheep that feed where
madder is sown will have rose-coloured fleeces).
A great economy and a lovely tint!" "So also,"
he goes on to say, "the Abbé Moigno
recommended a black manure for grazing grounds, to
give to the hides of the cattle an indestructible
hue, which renders bleaching unnecessary for
the boots afterwards made of the leather. A
learned Spaniard is reported to have gone still
further. His receipt, employed successfully (?)
at Martinique, says: 'When coffee is planted
they bury small coffee-mills in the soil, at
distances of a hundred yards, and the result is
coffee ready ground.'" M. Alphonse Karr,
however, describes a mode of changing or modifying
the colours of certain flowers, for which he
vouches. "When, in the autumn, you are
smoking a good cigar in your garden—a real
Havannah—do not suffer the ash to fall on the
ground, but press it lightly over the petals of
the dahlia; the parts which you have touched
will change colour. I have made the experiment
upon two flowers only, a yellow and a
pink dahlia. The points of the petals of the
first, touched by the cigar-ash, became brick-
red, those of the second green."

M. Karr is very sceptical about what are
frequently called blue flowers. It is an epithet
to be mistrusted, he says, when applied to a
plant in a catalogue. "I ought long ago to have
obtained admission into the language of
horticulture of a colour which is not in the prism,
and which painters are unacquainted with. To
Prussian blue, ultramarine and royal blue, I have
added gardener's blue: it is a colour which
begins with amaranth, and ends with violet, and
sometimes with brown. Apropos of blue flowers,
I cultivate two which I never meet with in
gardens, which are very pretty, and which have
besides the merit of being really blue, a thing of
very rare occurrence; one is the commalina
tuberose, with sky-blue flowers, and the other
the plumbago larpentæ, with umbels of flowers of
a magnificent dark blue. These two plants
grow in the open air, but must be covered up
in winter, when the commeline disappears
entirely, except a few dried leaves."

Almost all the old poets give to the month of
May the name of "the month of roses." This
error arises from their having taken their ideas
ready made from Greece and Italy, and because
the troubadours who sang of them came from the
south of France. In reality, almost throughout
France June is the month of roses, as July is
in England. The Bengal and some other scentless
varieties alone flourish in May, and Ronsard
was quite wrong when he said of Mary Stuart:
"In spring among the roses she was born;"
though that, indeed, was an extreme poetic
license, for her birthday was the 7th of December.
One has often reason to be astonished that poets
appear frequently to observe nature only in books,
and some authors, speaking of flowers, commit
errors of the most glaring nature. M. Alphonse
Karr cites several popular names who have sinned
in this way. Alexandre Dumas talks of peach-
trees blossoming at the end of May; Madame
Sand speaks of blue chrysanthemums; De Balzac
describes azaleas climbing over a house;
Jules Janin imagined he had seen blue pinks;
and M. Rollé boasts of the intoxicating odour
of the camellia. Before their time, Madame de
Genlis prattled of green and black roses, but
much may be pardoned her, for she was the first
who conveyed the moss-rose from England to
France. "It is not only of writers," adds M.
Karr, "that the roses have a right to complain;
certain gardeners and amateurs have, with
respect to them, a good deal to reproach themselves
with. In order to encourage new kinds they
abandon the cultivation of the richest and most
magnificent roses. The hundred-leaved rose, the
finest of all, is now banished from almost every
critical amateur's garden, and for this reason:
because it only blooms once a year, fashion having
decided that, like some other sorts, it ought to
do so twice every summer. I can perfectly
understand giving a better reception to roses
that renew themselves, but before you proscribe
our beautiful old favourites wait at least till you
get new ones like them that bear twice. So far
from this being the case, the only quality
exacted from roses is the principle of renewal.
However beautiful may be the colour or the
perfume of a rose, unless it reappears the same
season, it is passed by with contempt. Why
not exact the same thing from lilacs? indeed,
are not our gardens filled with plants that only
blow once a year? But this is not all; the
quality of reproduction being alone esteemed,
every kind of license is permitted to the roses
that possess it, the greater part of them are
scentless, and many are far from having the
beautiful shape and rich colour of the exiles they
have replaced. For myself, I candidly confess
I infinitely prefer a fine rose that blows only
once a year, to an ordinary rose that makes a
second appearance; I love better that which is
rich in fragrance a single time to the rose that
is scentless twice. If certain amateurs are
allowed their own way we shall finish by
having a collection of roses—in paper. The
best way to meet these renewing roses is to
pinch off the buds on their first appearance,
and on the next occasion you will have fine
flowers. Some catalogues contain lists of
upwards of three thousand different kinds of roses.
Many of them have received as many names as
Spanish princesses. A gardener, or amateur,
observes a rose in his bed which is unknown to
him; he declares it to be a new sort, gives it a
name, and forthwith it is established. And it
sometimes happens that the same rose is
discovered by two or three other gardeners. An
accident, too, is often accepted as a variety.
Such and such a rose flowering in the shade or
in the sun, growing in a loamy or a sandy soil,
presents apparent differences from the same rose
placed under other circumstances. You sow,
for example, seeds of the rose du roi; there
springs up a paler rose, with less scent and fewer
petals, one, in fact, of an inferior order; no