fondness for the Alba group of roses which Lindley, in 1820, considered the most beautiful. Albas are less imposing than Centifolias or Gallicas but have a sweeter refinement. Many old gardens have a bush of the White Rose of the House of York (Rosa alba flore-pleno), with attractive blue-green foliage, its full, compact flower opening often with a faint, quickly passing flush of blush-pink--a rose of purity and composure. As a white rose it is much more pleasing than the white Centifolia or even the white Moss.
     Many old ladies with minds trailing back into happy memories like to have an "old blush rose," the pale Maiden's Blush. While this rose is always spoken about as being blush, it is not a pale pink, but a blush we might call "blush-mulberry"--what Parkinson, always particular about his descriptions of color, describes as "of a bright, pale murrey color." Maiden's Blush is a handsome rose, and of a delicate and pleasant fra-rance. It is the "Rosa incarnata" of the old herbalists.
     Less often found, but much admired, is the deeper pink Alba, the "Rubicunda," the old Celestial, a gay, charming sort. Its history is lost in a misty antiquity, as is that of both the white and the "bright, pale murrey." Having had these three Alba roses before us for several years as familiar old friends, we have looked at another Alba, more pink than Maiden's Blush, more lilac than Celestial, a rose we call University, because it grows where the workmen's cottages are said to have stood when the University of Virginia was being built. Coloring, form, habit, and the like, are like the description of an Alba called Due de Luxembourg, but we recognize that there is much confusion in the Alba family.
     This past June, an Alba rose whose history goes back a hundred years in one family and centers about Salem, Mass., produced roses we had not seen before. Its foliage and habit of growth suggested that probably we had just another Flore-pleno, but its pushing flower-buds said not. The sepals frilled out into a more foliated decoration, and the hip took on more of an urn-shape--small points, but different. The bloom surprised us, for never before had we seen an Alba with a good bit of pale yellow in its center, upon opening, but there it was, over and over. After spreading out on tables and chairs all the books

we have, open at Rosa alba, we made the grand tour of varieties and settled down with William Paul of 1848, calling our rose Blanche Belgique, with "flowers white, their centers tinted with sulphur, of medium size, full; form compact; habit branching; growth moderate; foliage dark green." While our foliage is dark blue-green, the description fits, and is the only one that does fit. At least, for the present, we rest on that--another identification.
     Another rose, its ancestry located in New England, now growing in a Long Island garden, from which we secured a plant, has a few points indicating some Alba features, but many more points indicating Gallica derivation, important among the latter being the circular form and open fashion of the bloom. That being the case, it is fair to suppose this rose would be classed as a Gallica. These early hybrids, of which numbers survive, present much confusion, but we must follow the way of the old masters who classed their roses according to their dominating characteristics. The bud of this so-called Gallica showed spots of carmine on the opening petals. We watched the flower unfold and found that the large, flat bloom, with its typical ring of golden stamens, carried blotches of carmine on its lively rosy pink petals. Mottled this way, the rose would, no doubt, belong in the group of variegated Gallicas, a much-admired sort a hundred years ago. It may be Phenice, a hand-some pink variety, striped and variegated with carmine-as William Prince described it, "cherry-spotted with a roseate center." We search diligently for another pink Gallica of a gay shade with blotches of carmine, and find none such within the precincts of our sleuthings, so we make a note to watch this rose another year and check it up again. The French rosemen grew by far the greater numbers of these bizarre roses in the days of their immense vogue. English and American rosemen . sold them almost as soon as they were released for sale. Phénice was sold here, as old lists indicate.
     Even more fascinating than running down records of Phenice, has been verifying a sweet rose classed as a Damascena and called by the delicious name of Hebe's Lip.* This rose, named

*See Plate facing page 19 as engraved from illustration in Miss Willmott's "The Genus Rosa," where it is named as Rosa damascena, var. rubrotincta.