July 30, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



365 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New Yokk. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— Protection for the Originators of New Plants. — Save the 



BigTrees 365 



The Gardens of the Fountain at Nimes. (Illustrated.) 366 



The Alleghanies of Virginia in June Anna M. Vail. 367 



New or Little Known Plants :— Schubcrtia granditlora, Mart, and Zucc. 



(With figure) S. IV. 368 



New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 36S 



Plant Notes : — Hypericum Kalmianum and Lobelia Kalinii E. J. Hill. 370 



Cultural Department :— Notes on Shrubs J. G. J. 370 



Notes on American Plants F. II. Horsford. 371 



Cinerarias tV- T. 372 



The Vegetable Garden Professor IV. F. Massey. 373 



The Dewberry Professor E. S. Goff. 373 



Erpetion reniforme.— Californian Lilies E. 0. Orpet. 373 



Nymphfea rosacea. — Nympaea pygmaea alba G. 374 



The Forest :— The Sihlwald.— I Gifford Pinchot. 374 



Correspondence :— Experiments in Producing Rain M. C. 374 



The Crandall Currant George IV. Campbell. 375 



The Utah Black Currant Tlwmas Median. 375 



Recent Publications 375 



Notes 37° 



Illustrations :— Schubertia granditlora. Fig. 48 369 



Roman Baths, Gardens of the Fountain, Nimes 371 



Protection for the Originators of New Plants. 



HOW the originators or introducers of new varieties of 

 plants can be protected in what seems to be clearly 

 their right to some special proprietorship of their produc- 

 tions is a subject that has often been discussed. At the 

 late Convention of Nurserymen in this city the fact was 

 emphasized that very few persons in this country who had 

 originated valuable varieties of fruit had received any 

 direct benefit from it. As an illustration it was stated that 

 Mr. Worden, who brought out the Grape named after him, 

 and which many people esteem, all things considered, as 

 the best black Grape grown, is now a poor man, and never 

 made $500 from this valuable introduction. If inventors 

 are protected by law against the piracy of ideas which 

 have Cost them labor and study, it would seem just that a 

 man should be able to reap some reward for having 

 brought out after much thought and experiment a new 

 fruit which may add to the wealth and comfort of millions. 



Different plans for patenting plants have been often ad- 

 vocated, but the essential objection to them all was well 

 stated by Professor Bailey more than a year ago in this 

 journal (ii., 188), as follows : "It is exceedingly doubtful 

 if a patent could be secured for varieties which spring up 

 from a chance seedling, and most of our varieties come in 

 this way. But if the patent were granted there are innu- 

 merable cases in which no jury of experts could agree con- 

 cerning the distinctness of varieties. " Few cautious persons 

 would be willing to swear to the identity of a given Straw- 

 berry or Rose, and it would be difficult to prove in any 

 given instance that the flower or fruit in question was not 

 a new one closely resembling an older variety. 



In an earlier number, vol. ii., p. 46, Mr. A. L.Bancroft, 

 of California, suggested a horticultural register wherein 

 separate plants like Roses, Chrysanthemums, Ferns, Apples, 

 Grapes, could be kept and numbered, on a system similar 

 to that adopted in the various herd-books where choice 

 live stock is registered, but we then pointed out that a 

 herd-book was devised for a purpose quite distinct from 

 those which it is proposed to secure by a system of plant 

 registration. Individual animals are registered so that 

 they may be identified, that their pedigree may be estab- 



lished and that purity of blood may be maintained in a 

 given breed or strain of live stock. In the case of plants, 

 where the registration of one individual must stand for an 

 entire class and where the parentage is often unknown 

 and always of secondary importance, it is difficult to see 

 how such a list would prevent a duplication of names for 

 the same plant or the selling of different plants under the 

 same name. Mr. Bancroft's scheme has been carefully 

 elaborated since then, and a plan of registration has been 

 adopted by the California State Horticultural Society. We 

 have no space here to go into the details of the plan, which 

 have been very carefully elaborated, but as it was discussed 

 it seemed to the nurserymen in their convention that it 

 was quite too cumbersome to be practical and effective. 



There is, however, considerable protection already given 

 to the originator of a new fruit in the copyright law. Mr. 

 Hoyt, of New Canaan, Connecticut, stated that he had taken 

 out such a right on his label of the Green Mountain Grape 

 and had been instructed by eminent legal authority that no 

 man could vise this title on a label to a Grape vine and sell 

 it without his consent. It is true that if any one should 

 buy a plant of Mr. Hoyt he could propagate it as largely 

 as he chose for his own use, or could sell the vines under 

 another name, but there would be little temptation to 

 a grower to sell a really valuable variety under a name 

 which would conceal its identity. The name is the very 

 thing the plant-pirate most wants, and he very often sells 

 nothing else but the name of a good variety, attaching it 

 to an entirely different plant from the one it really belongs 

 to. This registered trade-mark has proved of value too 

 in preventing the sale of spurious plants under the label 

 so registered, so that copyrighting assists in preventing 

 the sale by unauthorized persons ooth of genuine plants 

 and their counterfeits. 



It is hard to see how much greater protection than this 

 can be secured by a horticultural register. The plan of 

 registering new plants has, however, many. merits in other 

 directions. It would be of interest to have an accurate 

 description of any new plant filed in some public office, 

 with its portrait and parentage so far as known. We 

 should like to compare a plant and berry of Hovey's Seed- 

 ling Strawberry as grown to-day with a preserved speci- 

 men of the original plant and its berry, or accurate portraits 

 and descriptions of them, to see if any variation from the 

 type had taken place. In questions of identity the register 

 might give some assistance, but the inherent difficulties 

 of accurate varietal description would remain. An organ- 

 ized effort to secure registration would be of value, too, in 

 enlisting the co-operation of all horticulturists to secure to 

 originators their rights, for, although no system yet devised 

 can add much to the protection now given by the trade- 

 mark laws, this protection would be much more effective 

 if it had an active and united public sentiment behind it. 



Of course this protection to the introducers of new plants 

 would make such plants more expensive for a time, just as 

 patented machinery and copyrighted literature is more ex- 

 pensive. But although this increased price might be con- 

 sidered a burden upon horticulture the advantages gained 

 would be positive and important. Chief among these 

 would be the encouragement offered to careful experiments 

 in hybridizing. When growers can feel sure that they will 

 reap some reward from discoveries in this field, we may 

 entertain a reasonable hope that the breeding of plants 

 may be reduced to something like a system or a science. 



It is well known that several of the groves of the Giant 

 Sequoia in the California Mountains have been invaded by 

 the axe and that lumber from many of the Big Trees has 

 gone into the market as Redwood. Most of the timber- 

 lands in which the Sequoia occurs have passed into the 

 hands of lumbermen and speculators; but according to the 

 Visalia Delta, one grove of these grand trees still remains 

 in Tulare County in the hands of the Government. An en- 

 thusiastic description of the tract is given, but this was 

 brought out by the fact that surveyors and locators are 



