DISCUSSION. 207 
been a raiser of Roses. I have communicated with others and have found 
that for all our trouble as Rose raisers our practical benefit has been almost 
nil. We have worked for honour and glory. That no doubt is a great 
thing. It is a grand thing to have your name handed down as a bene- 
factor of the human race. But if the same pains, the same work, the 
same intelligence, had been given in any other profession or trade, in all 
probability men who had done equally good work would have reaped 
considerable pecuniary reward. I think the time has almost come when 
the Legislature should give some form of protection to the producers of 
such good things. I certainly think the labourer is worthy of his hire. 
I have talked it over with others, and it does not seem to me impracticable 
that some form of protection should be given to the man who has raised 
and distributed a new plant. He should have at least two, three, or four 
years of protection. It is a right given to other people—the right of 
private manufacture. A man who makes a screw which twists a trifle 
easier is protected by the Legislature, which gives him for many years the 
sole right to make that screw himself, or to receive payment for allowing 
other people to produce it. Jam very glad that the original suggestion 
on this matter came from a man who has no interest in the trade like 
myself; but I have felt it so keenly, and I am sure that other raisers have 
also, that it seems to me at the end of a Conference such as we have had 
it was fitting that the subject should have been introduced. I, person- 
ally, as a raiser and a tradesman, thank Mr. Engleheart very warmly. 
Mr. Georce Bunyarp, V.M.H.: Mr. Engleheart has introduced a 
subject which, of course, is of very great interest to all of us, and he hag 
started a discussion on the commercial aspect of horticultural questions. 
I am not a botanist; I am not a scientist; I am acommercial man; and 
I think the whole thing lies in a nutshell. It surely remains with the 
person who raises a thing to sell it at his own price. It seems to me a 
very simple thing. Say that I raise a new Apple ; it seems to me as easy 
a thing as can be if I want to make £100 out of it that I should raise a 
sufficient stock which at 5s. apiece will bring me in that amount. All I 
should have to do would be to say, “I have brought out a new Apple. I 
am willing to distribute it at 5s. a piece, and I do not intend to let it go 
until I have sufficient orders for it to pay me for my trouble.’”’ The idea 
of having patent rights in a thing that can be so easily and readily pro- 
pagated seems to me not only in the highest degree improbable to be 
attempted, but impossible to be secured by any legislative action. What 
power can possibly prevent distribution? A head gardener might throw 
a cutting or a root on a rubbish heap and his assistant might go and 
give it toa friend. You cannot follow it up and prevent it. The subject 
has frequently been discussed between Mr. Rivers and myself. I told 
him, “ You have been disinterested almost to the point of folly ; you have 
practically given away plants of enormous commercial value.’’ But he 
could not blame me. I had bought the things of him, and I had given 
him whatever price he asked forthem. The remedy is to put a sufficient 
price upon a new plant when you first part with it; and on those lines 
the whole thing seems to me a yery simple commercial matter, requiring 
no patent rights whatever, save those which each man can manufacture 
for himself. 
