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GARDEl^ERS' CHRONICLE 



Departments of Foreign Exchange and Book Reviews 



RIGHT OF PROPRIETORSHIP AND PROTECTION 

 IN HORTICULTURAL NOVELTIES 



The question is eagerly discussed— and this may be conceived 

 — by our able seedsmen, hybridizers and, in general, by the hor- 

 ticulturalists who. with reason, maintain that their efforts in the 

 way of improving and of perfecting the floral and vegetable 

 species and varieties should be recognized and be productive of 

 the legitimate profit that their labors and their researches ought 

 to assure them. 



And certainly it is not a feeling of pure vanity nor of egotism 

 that has been able to dominate those who have claimed, with 

 arguments of indisputable right, the protection of the fruit of 

 their patient studies. 



Any one whatever has the right to have officially patented a 

 valuable invention; why should not the horticulturist and the 

 floriculturalist benefit at all from the same right? 



The account, very complete and well ordered, of the last Horti- 

 cultural Congress, an account given by our sympathetic confrere. 

 Mons. Ch. Arranger, informs us that Messrs. Pernet-Ducher. 

 Rivoire and Turbat, considering the actual status of French legis- 

 lation, which likens, it is said, the registering of horticultural 

 novelties to the registering of manufacturers' brands, have ex- 

 pressed the opinion, the very just opinion, that "that which is of 

 most importance is to afiirm, in ways most prompt, the right of 

 priority in horticultural novelties." 



All sensible souls will range themselves along with this opinion. 

 But it seems fitting that the interests of horticulture demand more 

 than the right of friority and that it is the right of prol<)-ictorship 

 that ought to be considered. 



.'\s Mons. Emile Lemoine has said, at this same congress, horti- 

 cultural proprietorship has actually nothing effective, and we add, 

 to the great loss of all skillful hybridizers and of investigators 

 ■whose perseverance, for all that, should deserve to hallow for 

 them the results that are fortunate for everybody, in a way the 

 most positive. 



Mons. Emile Lemoine would advocate a system analogous to 

 literary proprietorship and to that that obtains in the arts, which 

 is regulated by international conventions. It is the sentiment of 

 Mons. Pernet-Ducher also, who demands the protection of the 

 state through the deliverance of a patent right. 



It is therein perhaps that is to be found the most rational and 

 most efficacious system of protection. 



-Mready, in the session of June, 1919, the Council General of 

 the Maritime .'Mps was inspired with this same thou.ght in e.x- 

 pressing "a wish tending toward the right of proprietorship of 

 a floriculturist who, by his la])ors, 'has succeeded in creating a 

 new variety of flower.' " 



It is a pleasure for us to recall this desire which accords in the 

 best possible way with the conception that ought to be formed in 

 all reason of the right acquired by the initiator, nr by the inventor, 

 in a matter horticultural as in a matter industrial. 



Just as in the case of every proprietorship, industrial or artistic, 

 the creation of a new variety horticultural, floral, vegetable, etc., 

 ou.sfht to procure for him who is its author the sanctioning of 

 an absolute right over the results of his labors. 



Now look at the unreasonableness of it in this way : 

 When a painter, in order to compose a picture with more or 

 less resemblance, can draw inspiration from a flower, in repro- 

 ducing, more or less faithfully, the purity of the lines and the 

 richness of the colors, and sees his work protected against repro- 

 ductions, against those who would be tcmjited to copy, when his 

 right to proprietorship in a work of art is recognized, tlie ex- 

 plorer or introducer, the sower or tlie floriculturist who. by his 

 art (which the public at large is ignorant of or misinterprets too 

 often) — by his scientific researches and by his labors, let us say 

 which often are long, painful and costly, has succeeded in fixing 

 a new variety, in realizing, to follow the expression that is sanc- 

 t'oned, a new gain that is going to enrich the French horticultural 

 inheritance, this cannot insure the legitimate ownership of the 

 fruits of his patient researches bv preserving, at least for a cer- 

 tain time, the exckisiveness of this ownership to which his quite 

 personal creation ought to give an incontestable right, if not im- 

 prescriptible. 



In the actual status of legislation have the horticulturist and 

 the floriculturist the possibility of protecting themselves against 

 an immediate appropriation, through copying, of the novelties that 

 they have created? 



It seems not so, for they cannot claim the application of the 



law of July 19-24. 1873, on artist proprietorship, which applies 

 exclusively to the rights of ownership of literary authors of all 

 sorts, of musical composers, of painters and designers. They 

 have not any more the ability to appeal to the law of j'uly, 1844, 

 concerning letters patent for inventions, the patent right not being 

 furnished except "for a process having for its object an industrial 

 result." 



The sole and only resource, then, that they have in the actual 

 condition of legislation, is the right of priority, by virtue of which 

 the registration of horticultural novelties is likened to the regis- 

 tration of manufacturers' trademarks, which is far from being 

 equivalent to the right of ownership. 



To pretend that the transformation obtained in a certain type 

 of flower, by artificial hybridization or by any other treatment 

 having for its end the calling forth in the plant of a vital dif- 

 ference of natural evolutions, cannot be likened to the proprietor- 

 ship of an author, of a composer, of a painter or of a designer, 

 is at least going too far. For it is incontestable that every orig- 

 inal conception, realizable under a new form and reproducible, 

 constitutes a work that may be protected, that is to say, patented, 

 because it is the fruit of personal work and the creation traceable 

 to a horticulturist, just as legitimately as that of the industrial 

 worker or of the artist, and may claim the protection of the law. 



This protection is accorded to works of art of a low class and 

 to industrial innovations having only a relative value. It is inex- 

 plicable that it should be refused still to the one who, in order to 

 obtain a horticultural novelty, has devoted special knowledge, at 

 times has even created for this end a particular method and has 

 had to consecrate to the work long and patient researches lasting 

 some years. 



One ought then to expect that the ownership of novelties in 

 horticultural matters should be likened to literary and artistic 

 proprietorship and that it should enjoy the same protection. 



Horticulturists will join, without reserve, in the wish formu- 

 lated by the Council General of the Maritime -\lps. a wish over 

 which one could not congratulate one's self too* much, the more 

 because it is a matter sufliciently rare to merit its being em- 

 phasized. 



This cause must triumph over indifference and apathy. It must 

 assure the legal protection of novelties to the persevering re- 

 searches, to the persistent efforts and to the science of our horti- 

 i-iilturalists. — Lc Jar din. 



LENGTH OF DAY AND BLOSSOM TIME 



The remarkable effects in forcing premature blooming produced 

 liy the curtailment of the period of exposure to daylight have 

 already been descri1)ed. It now remains to recount the no less 

 remarkable results observed by Messrs. Garner and Allard when 

 plants thus forced are re-exposed for the full period of daylight. 

 They found that plants of Soy Beans treated in this manner 

 ripened their seed : their leaves turned yellow and the plants looked 

 as if they were about to die a "natural" death: but instead they 

 threw out new branches and while still bearing their first crop of 

 ripened seed blossomed for the second time in September — the 

 month in which the plants that throughout their life had been 

 exposed to normal daylight blossomed for the first time. Similar 

 resumption of growth took olace among .\sters and other plants 

 transferred from curtailed daylight to normal conditions, and a 

 second blossoming coincident in time with the first natural blos- 

 soming of normal plants also took place. The gardener with the 

 habit of reflection will think in this connection of the second flow- 

 ering in the -Autumn of such plants as -\nchusas and Cat Mint 

 when cut down after they have finished their first period of blos- 

 somin.g. The experiments carried out with early and late vari- 

 eties of Soy Beans and with other plants sho'w on the one hand 

 that certain plants are what may be called "short day" plants, 

 that is, they only flower wJien the light hours of the day do not 

 exceed a certain maximum, which of course varies for each plant, 

 and on the other hand that some plants fail to find in a given 

 latitude a day of length sufficient to enable them to develop blos- 

 som at all. Thus a Composite. Mikania scatidcns. maintained 

 throughout the year under short day conditions remained sterile 

 and could only lie prevailed upon to blossom in the summer time 

 when long days occur. Conversely, late varieties, c.i^.. of Soy 

 Bean, are apparently late because they can only blossom when 

 the long summer days have given place to the shorter dayl'ght 

 periods which characterise the later months of the year. It would 

 seem that these observations throw a new and interestin.g light on 

 the sterility and other vagaries of plants introduced from one 



