Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 Excerpt: ...squeezed out of it, and you have a pretty good idea of the sight that greeted my eyes as I entered the show-yard of Brie Comte Robert. But at one end there was a very large oblong tent, and on entering that a very different sight presented itself. There all was fragrance and beautiful colour. All the Roses were placed on the ground--no stages of any kind being used. First of all, there ran right round the great oblong tent a sloping bed of sandy earth, about five feet wide, covered with young Barley, the seed of which had been sown eight or ten days before. On this were thickly placed the Roses--eight rows deep, or thereabouts. They were for the greater part placed in small earthenware bottles, about five inches high, with long narrow necks and wide globose bases; and, placed amongst the Barley-grass, these looked very well indeed. Generally three or more Roses were placed in each bottle, which was made of ordinary garden-pot stuff, and of the same colour; and they looked so much better than those of glass used by some exhibitors, that their use should be made compulsory. Thus the most conspicuous thing in the tent was a dense bed of Roses around its sides. In the central parts of the tent there were beds of various shapes in which the Roses were plunged in moss, and mostly arranged in masses; for example, a bed of 700 blooms of General Jacqueminot, edged with a line of Aimee Vibert; a bed of Madame Boll, edged with white and red Roses, all the flowers plunged singly in dark green moss, and so on. The competitors vied rather in quantity than in quality, and one exhibitor showed as many as six hundred varieties, or supposed varieties--certainly he had that number of bottles. Others showed large numbers also, but in most cases the Roses were inferior to those...