The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-24

America is poorer in natural species
 than is the eastern continent, and thls
 together with the fact that rose cul
 ture was we'll established across the
 water before gardening was begun III
 America accounts for our having so few
 varieties of roses developed from na-
 tive species.
 The prairie or Michigan rose is the l only American kind from which culti-
 vated varieties are known to have come
 The Messieurs Feast of Baltimore rais- | ed seedlings from it in 1886, and among
 them were the Queen of the Prairies and the Baltimore Belle, two vigorous
 old-fashioned climbers that old-fash- | toned people still love, though they have
 been much supplanted by climbing hy-
 brids and teas or the two Baltimore Belle is the more delicate in form and l in constitution, seeming to show traces | of Noisette blood, but they are both so hardy and grow so rapidly that they will never quite lose favor until some of the more finished varieties have been l produced with strength equal to their beauty
 IL was chance that used to watch over the origination of new roses, and, though gardeners do much systematic work with seedlings at present, chance
 is still busy, and sometimes has better results than foresight; one school of
 gardeners thinks she always has. A few years ago a. red rose sprang up in
 Washington garden. Nc one knew
 whence it came or where it belonged,
 but when it blossomed it's unusual rlch- off n if
 at once and, after making sure that it
 was a distinct new variety, it was
 christened American Beauty. Every
 one knows how popular the exquisite, sturdy-looking thing has since become, and few would guess that one of its
 best-llnown growers is already fearing its decline. With no apparent cause
 the plants have failed in vigor of late,
 and instead of throwing out freely their long rich flower stems, they are inclined
 to bloom on short, dwarfish twigs that
 make the blossoms almost unlovely and
 quite unmarketable. And so the Amer
 ican Beauty bids fair to end as it be-
 gan, in mystery; for the decline of
 flowers is usually 0 decline of favor
 rather than of merit, although it is a
 fact that arti1cially produced varieties
 of fruit have often been known to wear
 themselves out. A variety which can not produce itself by seed is practically one plant with a more or less limited
 term of existence No matter how wide ly distributed it's individuals may be, each is a cutting, a layer, a bud, or graft, directly or indirectly from the orlgainal seeding; and, since even our grand forest trees, the longest-lived, simple outcomes of a seed, grow old. this great scattered growth ages, loses vigor, and dies at last
 Not only nature and science, but tra- dition, connect the rose with sterner woody forms, as is testified to by Sir John Maundeville, who started the fashion of travelling in the far east and of telling big stories a9out it. He picked up endless legends there, as modern wanderers gather bric-a-brac and relies with charming faith in their antecedents, and brought home this bit of history Hamuel, q --ew in Bethle- hem, once loved a beautiful maiden who did not love him. He was 0 brutal man, and when he saw that his suit was hopeless he denounced her as a demo- niac. Demoniacs are burnt at the stake; but when the executioners started the fire about her the flames were miracu- lously turned away. The stake to which she was bound freshened and turned into flower, and as she lifted her grate- ful eyes heavenward there swayed above her the first roses that ever bloomed outside of eden. In Maunde- villes day, when science and miracle were very closely allied, scientists may have endorsed this theory of the rapid | evolution of the rose from a different | vegetable structure: but, if he had ad- vanced it lately, even such a bold for | mulator as he would have offered it solely to poets. And yet the sudden | of dry stake into flower is scarcely more wonderful than the changes that science itself has traced In the development of the blossom from the living branch.
 If the mind once asks why plants are thus and thus, the door Is opened into an endless investigation of the curious of growth and of specializa- ton of parts. Science may never com pletely answer even the question why nature loves the number five,' for one why" only leads to another, until the luestioner stands face to face with the primary, unsolvable mysteries of life. And it must be said for him that he bows before them with a more intelli- gent reverence than can be felt by those who never question. Yet the scientists lnow much of the "how' of Natures works, and their narrations of it tell If gradual change and sudden transfor- nation, as wonderful as those which we Ill love in classic myth and fairy tales.
 The flower, for instance, is only q of the branch the petals lnd sepals, pistils and stamens being pecialized leaves, crowded in close vhorls round the shortened axis, yet lot quite forgetting the laws which would have governed their arrange nent if they had developed into com non green foliage. Nature is full of he proof of this queer fact. The sepals uggest in the beginning being usually .reen and somewhat leaf-like, and of- en being surrounded by bracts from { which it is hard to distinguish them while bracts. in turn, shade gradually | nto the regular leaves. But sometimes, $ in the true lily, the sepals are not