"The Rose is of exceeding great use with us, for the Damask Rose (besides the superexcellent sweet water it yieldeth, being distilled, or the perfume of its leaves, being dried, serving to fill sweet bags) serveth to cause solubleness of the body, made into a syrup, or preserved with sugar, moist or candied." The name is obviously from Damascus. CANKER (_Rosa canina_). This is the wild dog-rose common to many countries. The name dog-rose was given to it by the Romans, because the root was said to cure the bite of a mad dog. Pliny says the remedy was discovered in a dream by the mother of a soldier who had been bitten by a mad dog. _Don Juan's_ remark in "Much Ado About Nothing."[51] I had rather be a canker in the hedge Than a rose in his garden, refers, of course, to the canker-rose. According to legend, the Crown of Thorns was made from the briers of this variety of rose. [51] Act I, Scene III. VARIEGATED ROSE (_Rosa versicolor_) of Shakespeare's plays is the curious bush which produces at the same time red roses, white roses, and roses of red mottled with white and of white mottled with red. The growth of the tree is stiff and erect and the flowers have a sweet scent. The rose is often called the "York and Lancaster." Parkinson says: "This Rose in the form and order of the growing is nearest unto the ordinary Damask Rose both for stem, branch, leaf and flower, the difference consisting in this--that the flower (being of the same largeness and doubleness as the Damask Rose) hath the one half of it sometimes of a pale whitish color and the other half of a paler damask color than the ordinary. This happeneth so many times, and sometimes also the flower hath divers stripes and marks on it, one leaf white, or striped with white, and the other half blush, or striped with blush, sometimes all striped, or spotted over, and at other times little or no stripes, or marks, at all, as Nature listeth to play with varieties in this as in other flowers. Yet this I have observed, that the longer it abideth blown open to the sun, the paler and the fewer stripes, marks, or spots will be seen in it. The smell is of a weak Damask Rose scent." This rose recalls the old song of a "Lover to His Lancastrian Mistress," on handing her a white rose: If this fair rose offend thy sight, Placed in thy bosom bare, 'T will blush to find itself less white, And turn Lancastrian there, But if thy ruby lip it spy, As kiss it thou mayst deign, With envy pale 'twill lose its dye, And Yorkish turn again.