is in knowing both the owner and the professional in charge. A morning with him such as we enjoyed on this recent visit is something to remember. Added to that we had the surprise of finding in the rose-garden what our searching eye is always roving for, old roses--old roses cherished for sentiment.
     This lovely rose-garden, with a background of fine trees, is in the simple form of a rectangle. An elevated stage with pillars faces from one end a grass-plot large enough to seat a hundred guests among roses. Ell-shaped beds of Hybrid Teas cut into the corners of the grass carpet. Below the stage is a long border of Etoile de Hollande, "the best red rose so far." On all four sides of the grass-plot runs a path, while on the two long sides and the end facing the stage, are wide borders of bush roses, backed by lattices covered with climbing roses and clematis-- the large-flowered clematis hybrids with blooms in exquisite shades of cream, pink, lavender, and purple. In the flush of June this is a heavenly spot, and such it was on our particular Saturday morning. The fine discovery was that in these borders have been preserved the older roses of past gardens. As the estate is now many decades old, and has always been kept in prime cul-ture, these old roses are in excellent condition.
     When we had embarrassed our host by repeating, "What rose is. this?" and "What rose is this?", he explained.
     "I remember that these are the roses I used to grow on places in England, but I've forgotten their names."
     Recognizing some of the more familiar ones, knowing nothing about others, we went through the borders making a classifica-tion to June-blooming Centifolias and Albas, everblooming Teas, Hybrid Perpetuals (which are by far the greater number), and early Hybrid Teas. Later we took to the old books which tell us about so many hundreds of roses and so little about any one. So far we have made out only the following few: Duchesse de Brabant, T., a pink cup brimming with fragrance, our only named Tea among several; of Hybrid Perpetuals-Anna de Diesbach, carmine-pink, large and fragrant; Baroness Rothschild, pink also, but softer in shade, more orderly in shape, but scentless; her white sport, Merveille de Lyon, slightly shaded with rose and slightly scented, from which came Fran. Karl Druschki, also present, so chaste and so scentless; Paul Neyron,

unbelievably large, full, a deep rose-pink and somewhat fragrant, belonging to the same general group of Hybrid Perpetuals as Anna de Diesbach and Baroness Rothschild, as does the soft pink, finely shaped, exceedingly perfumed Mrs. John Laing.
     Old General Jacqueminot we found here, of course, so glowing and so sweet. Two other red roses deserve a word. One is a full dark purple beauty, shaped like a shallow cup, each petal having below its purple a band of brilliant crimson, and beyond that a white shank. This may be Empereur du Maroc, and again it may not, as there were three or four crimson and purple roses in the Empereur group. The red of the second purple-shaded rose glows in the sun like one of those little red lights with a candle burning in it which we see on little shrines. The purple is patched onto the red regularly throughout the globular bloom. When such roses of the Hybrid Perpetual family lose their names, the beholder is in a bad way to assign them. Along with these two we have to pass a handsome full rose of glistening white, and call it just an unknown white rose.
     By joining a tour and paying a fee devoted to the restoration of some Virginia memorial, we may as strangers visit the mature and reminiscent gardens important in our Colonial and Federal periods; have a cup of tea under an ancient white oak or a willow grown from a slip brought from the river Jordan; see plantings of roses carried to the estate by a bride of the Carter family as in a place famous for its box hedges and avenues deployed over a well-preserved large garden. Roses are not blooming at pilgrimage time, but we learn that the roses Ann Carter brought in 189.0 include such interesting old sorts as Champney's Pink Cluster, first cross of the Musk rose and Old Blush China, made in Charleston in 1817 and parent of the Noisette roses, itself very pale pink and heavily clustering and now very rare; the blush Seven Sisters, developing several shades in its clusters, and not so rare; Old Blush China, often called Pink Daily, very old, always cherished for its freedom of flowering and not rare at all; and La Tourterelle, or Dove Rose, so called because of its lilac-pink, dove-like color. Probably other brides added roses of their times, for a sort of period sequence is evident. Roses of the 1840's include the early Hybrid Perpetual La Reine, large and somewhat lilac-pink; Dr. Marx, red; Baronne Prévost,