2'4 



Lovett. Many more are still in the trial grounds of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture at Bell Station, one of which, 

 christened Miss Mary Wallace, will be available in two or three 

 years. 



The ideal rose for which he was striving, in all his later work, 

 at least, was a garden rose, with foliage that would compare in 

 healthfulness and disease resistance with the best of the rose species, 

 that would be hardy under ordinary garden culture, and that would 

 be a continuous bloomer. His experience taught him what would be 

 likely to give the desired results, but often he could not come directly 

 to the ends sought. For example, when he wanted to combine the 

 characters of some newly found species with the Hybrid Tea roses, 

 he would often find the two could not be crossed directly with one 

 another. He would then seek some other rose that would combine 

 with the new species, without changing the characteristics which he 

 wished to preserve, after which he would grow the resulting hybrids 

 and cross them with the hybrid tea. Sometimes he would need to 

 make another cross before he could get the seedlings for which he 

 was striving. When it is realized that each cross of this kind would 

 take from three to five years before he could take the next step an 

 idea is gained of the patience required. Sometimes the results of 

 these crosses would be infertile, producing neither perfect pistil nor 

 viable pollen, as in the case of a handsome scarlet rugosa growing in 

 the National Rose Test Garden which he was unable to use for fur- 

 ther breeding on this account. 



His great love of his work is shown in his having given up a 

 successful medical practice in 1891 to devote all his time to plant 

 breeding. He did this, even though he had taken a post graduate 

 course in medicine at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia 

 in 1886-7, after having graduated at the Hahneman Medical College 

 in the same city in 1880. His first work after this change was pri- 

 marily with the gladiolus on a farm between Alexandria and Mount 

 Vernon, Va. The soil was not adapted to his purpose so he aban- 

 doned it and went from there about 1892 to the Conard and Jones 

 Company of West Grove, Pa., then to Little Silver, N. J., and in 1897 

 to the Ruskin Colony in western Tennessee as the colony physician. 



In 1899 he became associated with the Rural New Yorker and 

 lived at Little Silver, N. J., where he continued his breeding work 

 on his own place. As associate editor for the following ten years 

 and as writer of the column of " Ruralisms " in this paper he has left 

 much valuable information on plant life and plant growing. From 

 1903 to 1910 he was also Vice-President of the Rural Publishing 

 Company. While at Little Silver he was breeding fruits, roses, 

 chesnuts, lilies, freesias, azaleas, and other ornamentals. 



In 1909 he went to the Plant Introduction Gardens of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, at Chico, Cal. As the climate did 

 not agree with his wife, he remained at Chico but a year and moved 

 to Washington, D. C, where his official work was with drug plants 



