1878.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



91 



planter of the tree supplied, and the tree which 

 purported to be supplied, at the period of crowth 

 when it becomes practicable to discover the 

 fraud or mistake with certainty. Of course this 

 difference may many times exceed the original 

 consideration for the sale of the tree. 



It is needless to say that if even all of those 

 who are the victims of honest mistakes should 

 enforce their claims under this law, the nursery 

 and seed trades would soon be anniliilated. But 

 there is no danger of a general enforcement of 

 this law; and it is a knowledge of this fact which 

 prompts men to sell spurious trees, plants and 

 seeds with impunity. 



The laws must assume that nurserymen and 

 other merchants supply just what they agree to 

 supply, and hence it throws upon their victims 

 the burden of proving the contrary. With most 

 varieties the question of identity cannot be deter- 

 mined with certainty until the trees have fruited. 

 This may involve waiting five years or more, and 

 even then it may require the evidence of experts 

 or experienced horticulturists. The production 

 of this class of evidence is necessarily expensive, 

 and unless the amount in controversy is large, 

 the victims cannot afford to attempt the enforce- 

 ment of tbeir rights. Beyond all this is the fact 

 that nursery stock is and must continue to be 

 mostly sold through canvassers. Many of these 

 canvassers are irresponsible. They are in the 

 business to-day and out of it to-morrow, or th^' 

 or their principals must be sought, and claims 

 enforced against them at great distances — often 

 in other States. 



It may be said that the evil can be arrested by 

 making it a penal or criminal offense to falsely 

 label any tree or plant, but then we would have 

 to encounter the same presumption of innocence. 

 We would require the same class of expert 

 proof. We would be obliged to wait for evidence 

 of the alleged fraud to develop ; oftentimes until 

 all other oflenses committed at the same time, 

 save murder, would have outlawed. We would 

 have to seek the offender where he might 

 happen to be, and the fraud in each individual 

 case would require to be tried separately. Expe- 

 rience in other things shows that the wheels of 

 the law would require to be set in operation by 

 the victims. In most cases this would involve 

 an outlay which the damages sustained would 

 not warrant them in making, and for no part of 

 this outlay could they lawfully re-imburse them- 

 selves Hence, except in aggravated cases, the 

 law would remain as dead a letter as the present 

 law is. 



The question now arises. Can nothing be done 

 to lessen this great evil? I think there can be, 

 and it was its supposed capability of doing this 

 that first directed my attention to a horticultural 

 copyright law. As any discussion of this feature 

 of the subject was omitted in the order of publi- 

 cation intended, I will in another communica- 

 tion endeavor to show how a copyi'ight law 

 would act on frauds, and why such a law may be 

 expected to materially lessen the commission of 

 such frauds. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



European Notes, by the EiMTor..— No. 7. — 

 I fancy the young men who learn gardening in 

 these days, can scarcely take the same delight in 

 their profession as did the young men forty or 

 fifty years ago ; or perhaps it may be that the 

 older ones of to-day do not know what the youn- 

 ger ones are doing. At any rate, at the time of 

 wliich I am now thinking it was not the fashion 

 for 3'oung gardeners to think their school educa- 

 tion finished as soon as the school-room ceased 

 to enclose them. When passing through the 

 Midland counties of England, I had a vision of 

 one who once in a while dropped in on me, of a 

 long winter evening, in the warm greenhouse 

 " stoke hole," and who, by the light of a piece 

 of wax candle stuck in the mouth of a porter 

 bottle, helped to conjugate Latin verbs together. 

 My young friend was now in charge of Newstead 

 Abbey, and one of the best-known and respected 

 among the intelligent class of British gardeners. 

 Besides the weight of this early attraction, I had 

 never seen these beautiful grounds, so much of 

 which is familiar to every one who has read au}- 

 thing of the history of Lord Byron. I switched 

 off, therefore, at Nottingham, and, armed with a 

 card of admission from Mrs. Amelia Jane AVebb, 

 who with Captiiin Webb delights in nothing so 

 much as sharing with others the treasures of 

 history and art that abound in the Abbey, I took 

 a "fly" for the long ride into the country, in 

 spite of the assurance that we would save niuch 

 time by rail. The road took us round a ceme- 

 tery in which most of the dead were in natural 

 caves in the rock. The entrances to some of 

 these caves presented a sight I had often read of 

 but never seen , and I think it one of the most beau- 

 tiful sights I ever saw in nature — the iridescent 

 moss. As we looked in the entrances to some of 

 these lioUows, at some little distances, the sides 

 would glisten with red and green and gold, which 

 would all disappear as you reached the spot, and 



