--a big order for a Moss rose! The clustering, full, pink Salet is fairly recurrent, enough so to justify the designation "perpetual" if that word be considered to mean "should bloom in autumn but probably will not." What looks like the most interesting rose of the lot is one marked "Pride of France." The dried branchlet tenaciously hanging together, bears a cluster of four roses and buds with a hangover of rich red color. About the name, Pride of France, there is among the old rose books a depressing silence. Possibly the name is not correct. As the French word "gloire" may be translated as "Pride," possibly this may be one of the roses, Gloire de France.
     The identification of a rose called Gloire de France came up about two years ago. A Bourbon rose producing fine large richly rose-colored flowers and "although an old variety continues to be much esteemed" was described in the lists of the American growers, Prince (1846), Parsons (1856), and Buist (1844). It had several names--Mme. Neumann, Mme. Dubreuil, Lebrun, Gloire de France, Rose d'Amour, Monthly Cabbage--making the question of identifications about impossible, as these syno-nyms do not check elsewhere. There were, moreover, two other Gloire de France roses, one a Gallica with a bright rose-colored, full bloom having a pale edge--a variety we think we found in northern New York State; the other a Hybrid Perpetual in 1853, described by William Paul (1863) as having deep red, large, full flowers of compact form on a moderate bush. The glory of France seems to have been pretty well emphasized about the middle of the nineteenth century!
     One day a highly fragrant, deep rose-red bloom with about an inch of stem arrived from Mexico, quite dead and pressed flat but delicious in real rose perfume. It bore the haunting name, "Recuerdos" or "rose of memories"! : Even now, months later, it emits a fragrance. As we look at it and smell it, we wonder what richly colored, many-petaled, scented rose of old Spanish days lent its perfume and radiance to romance and "recuerdos."
     This visiting of gardens--"apparelled with plants as with a. robe of imbroidered worke"--has carried us afar and delighted us greatly. "But these delights are in the outward senses," says our John Gerard; "the principal delight is in the minde singularly enriched with the knowledge of these visible things . . . ."