How Are New Roses Made ? 
J. Horace McFajrland, Editor American Rose Annual 
The energetic and persistent editor of the Bulletin of the Garden 
Club OF America insists that I must make good on the implied promise 
involved in a recent article on *' Making New Roses for America," in 
the direction of suggesting how they may be made. 
The breeding of new roses is a very technical matter if it is pur- 
sued with sufficient dignity, sobriety and concern. It is, however, 
very much in such work as it is in making butter. One time the 
great dairyman at Cornell, Professor Wing, said to me, "We have 
here completely worked out scientific rules for producing the best 
possible butter; yet every now and then I find some old woman in 
the country who never heard of science and never saw a rule, who is 
producing better butter than we know about!" 
It is this fine possibility that makes it worth while to commend the 
consideration of rose production to the women of the Garden Club, 
who would hardly have time to become absorbed in rose hybridiza- 
tion as a pursuit. 
In the 1916 American Rose Annual, on page 24, Prof. E. A. 
White, who is now the secretary of the American Rose Society, pre- 
sented a very clear statement as to the basis of rose-breeding. Any 
interested women are referred to this to get a start. 
It is not, I take it, in point here to tell exactly the motions 
for pollination, because the practice itself can easily be learned 
by any who are interested enough to buy, or read in a library, "Th^ 
Practical Book of Outdoor Rose-Growing," by Captain George 
C. Thomas, Jr. That is, detailed figures and suggestions are thus 
available. 
The point I would hke to bring out is that the woman who is 
interested and who provides herself with the simple outfit requisite, 
then needs ideals. What are the ideals she should hold? 
She must determine what she is working toward. To merely mix 
up a lot of rose pollen on a lot of receptive anthers and hope that 
something may happen, is interesting but not very important. To 
take a favorite rose, which is favored either because it has the color 
one likes, or the perfume one likes, or the form of bloom one hkes, 
or the ever-blooming habit one likes, or because it is a good climbing 
rose, or a particularly pleasing bush rose, and to use this rose as 
either male or female parent in order to combine into it some other 
qualities desired, is the worth-while work I should like to have 
undertaken. 
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