National and Educational Interests. 125 



his labors is as true when the product is a new flower as when 

 it is a new book or work of art. The intelhgence, thought 

 and study expended in growing a new race of garden plants 

 or new varieties of such a race are as great as is required to 

 produce a book ; but as long as the raiser of new plants must 

 lose all benefits of these creations of his brain as soon as he 

 sells the first individual, and so puts it in the power of his 

 competitors to reap the benefits which should belong to him, 

 the principal incentive to the production of new plants does 

 not exist. This is a subject of such vital importance to the 

 future of horticulture, here and everywhere, that we venture 

 to suggest to the executive committee of the association that 

 it deserves careful consideration at their hands." 



Several societies have taken up the question, and the Amer- 

 ican Association of Nurserymen appointed a committee to 

 take the whole subject into consideration and to report in 

 1891. The last public discussion of the subject in 1890, 

 appears to have been the following review which I contributed 

 to The American Garden for August : 



"Control of new varieties by the originator has been a 

 prolific source of discussion for a few years. Inventors are 

 protected by patents, and authors by copyrights ; should not 

 originators of varieties of plants be similarly protected ? 

 The question seems, at first to .admit of only an affirmative 

 answer. But there are differences between plants and books 

 or tools. 



"The earlier movement designed to protect the originator 

 was in the direction of a patent for new varieties. This 

 movement looked upon varieties as inventions, and for this 

 reason possesses elements of fatal weakness. It is a fact that 

 nearly all new varieties are mere accidents to the 'originator,' 

 who either picks them up in a chance fence-row, or finds them 

 among a miscellaneous batch of seedlings. The 'originator,' 

 is usually a mere 'finder,' and he may as well claim a patent 

 for the invention of a white raspberry or double hepatica 

 which he may find in the woods, as upon a new peach found 

 in his hedge-row. When the time comes that men breed 

 plants upon definite laws, and produce new and valuable 

 kinds with the certainty and forethought with which the 

 inventor constructs a new machine, or an author writes a 

 book, plant patents may possibly become practicable. 



