Getting On with Old Roses
By MRS. FREDERICK L. KEAYS
Great Neck, L. I., N. Y.

     EDITORS' NOTE.-Probably no other contemporary rose-lover has done so much to preserve, study and classify the roses of yesterday as Mrs. Keays. Her delightful as well as informative book, "Old Roses," published in 1935 by the Macmillan Co., is the real authority in America, and her writings in the Annuals for 1932, 1933, 1934, and 1936 have kept us informed of the progress in collecting and defining these forgotten beauties that our grandmothers grew and cherished before the Hybrid Tea craze obsessed us. She again takes us along in her search and her study. Reference is made to a new illustrated English book on "Old Garden Roses," by Edward A. Bunyard, published in 1936, and available through the American Rose Society.

INTER is the signal for a garden review by the open fire-- time to take out notebooks and pictures and the books about roses--time for detailed checking with authorities and for telling ourselves what to look for on the bushes when June comes again. Every year we remark that it is quite surprising how many old-fashioned roses, their names usually forgotten, turn up in one summer. While every season brings its parcel of new pleasures in this hobby of collecting and restoring old roses, sometimes a summer's crop surpasses, as has been the case this year.
     Blooms of this past June have been richer in interest than usual, some because they were especially exquisite, such as two very refined and beautifully tinted Centifolias; some lovely Moss roses in shades of pink and red; several because they presented something intricate, demanding more searching into the study of characteristics in order to make out where they belong in the great rose family.
     The roses which have been most interesting in this past season's group have been "family roses," as apart from com-pletely lost ones-roses brought from old settlements which have kept their homes and gardens-rural New England, north-ern New York, Michigan, southern Maryland, and Virginia. This brings to mind what a friend said, "If you want to find the' good things-roses, pewter or bedsteads-visit substantial old settlements which have remained placidly apart and intact." Grandmothers and great-grandmothers seem to have had a

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