ROSES: OR A MONOGRAPH OF THE GENUS ROSA: CONTAINING _COLOURED FIGURES_ OF ALL THE KNOWN SPECIES AND BEAUTIFUL VARIETIES DRAWN, ENGRAVED, DESCRIBED, AND COLOURED, from the Living Plants. _By H. C. ANDREWS_, AUTHOR OF THE BOTANIST’S REPOSITORY, COLOURED ENGRAVINGS OF HEATHS, ETC. Hail, lovely ROSE, of flowers the blushing queen! Burst, burst, ye numerous Nondescripts, with spleen! Ye wondrous Nothings, from a foreign soil Brought with such labour, care, and anxious toil,-- Say, can your utmost charms, combined, disclose Beauty and fragrance equal to the ROSE? London: PRINTED BY R. TAYLOR AND CO., 38, SHOE LANE; AND PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, 5, KNIGHTSBRIDGE. INTRODUCTION. The Rose, for matchless beauty famed, (although by botanists so disregarded) has been the Painter’s study and the Poet’s theme, for ages past, and will no doubt for ages yet to come; long after many a curious Nondescript shall in a dusty hortus siccus sleep, unnoticed and unknown. The intention of the author in the delineation of this unrivalled tribe, is to arrange as accurately as possible the numerous beautiful varieties, with their species--an arduous task, considering the neglect they have experienced, and the wild and indiscriminate manner in which they have been profusely mixed. This, aided by an heterogeneous mode of culture, has produced many varieties, the lineal descent of which is very difficult to ascertain. The extent of the genus has been most vaguely estimated; by some enumerated at two hundred and forty; an estimate that must certainly include many very slight varieties, which, if allowed, might swell the genus to ten times its real extent. But we think a rational computation would confine them within a hundred, including every distinct variety. The author’s intention is to figure only those to which a separate character can be affixed, regarding a superfluous repetition, even of beauty, inadmissible. As the merits of the present undertaking may easily be appreciated by a free access to all its beautiful originals, the author hopes a candid allowance will be made, upon a comparison with the living plant, when it is considered that the most elaborate efforts of art have never yet been able to do justice to its superior beauty. ROSA muscosa, _Provincialis_. _Moss Province Rose._ CHARACTER SPECIFICUS. ROSA, germinibus ovatis; calycibus et pedunculis muscosis; petiolis ramulisque hispidis et glanduloso-viscosis; spinis ramorum numerosis, rectis. SPECIFIC CHARACTER.