The patent laws secure to the inventor such a monopoly of bis machine or device as will richly repay him for his skill and ingenuity; the copyright act gives to the author the control of the fruits of his thought and genius; but for the agriculturist, the florist, and the horticulturist, who gives to the world a hew plant or a valuable fruit, there is no protection whatever, save that which his own prudence and foresight can provide; yet agriculture is defined to be the basis of our prosperity as a nation. Why the maker of a new mouse-trap should be able to reap thousands of dollars from his invention, under our patent laws, while the propagator of a new plant, the discoverer of a new fruit, the producer of an improved variety of grain which shall minister to the pleasure and delight of millions, and perhaps add untold wealth to the resources of nations, should not be equally deserving of reward, surpasses our comprehension. Nevertheless such is the fact. There is no protection to this profession anywhere.

May not this oversight of the law-makers have something to do with the want of enterprise, the slowness of improvement, the comparative stagnation which exists in all branches of agriculture ?

The patent laws are only about two hundred years old, and up to a comparatively recent period patentees were regarded with such distrust and suspicion as monopolists and extortioners, that in the courts a patent was seldom permitted to stand, if any ingenuity could detect a flaw. Yet, notwithstanding this illiberal policy, during this period what wonderful progress has been made in the arts and sciences under the stimulus of reward which even these imperfect and partial laws held out to the ingenuity of discoverers!

Compare the condition of the arts and sciences with agriculture, and what a vast difference do we perceive 1 It is true that we have made some progress in the cultivation of the soil; but do we not owe the great labor-saving implements which have superseded the spade, the mattock, the wooden plow, and* the sickle to the beneficent influence of the patent laws ? Something, too, we grant, has been discovered in regard to the chemical conditions of soils and their relative adaptability for plant-food. But how little has been done toward overcoming the obstacles which now attend the cultivation of our most valuable fruits, roots, and grains!

Have we not been too ready to set down to the account of nature the failures arising from our own ignorance? Does any one suppose that with an adequate incentive a remedy would not have long since been discovered for the ravages of rust, smut, mildew, and insects in the grain-. growing regions; that a more definite knowledge would not have been attained of the causes which are leading to the destruction of our apple, pear, plum, and cherry plantations; our vineyards; the failure of the potato crop, and the means of their prevention? Undoubtedly; yet what is everybody's business is nobody's business. We see rot and mildew, mold and rust, decay and destruction yearly increasing where once was healthful plenty, and we stolidly resign ourselves to the reflection, that as Nature no longer smiles upon our efforts, it is therefore vain to fly in the face of Providence. So, instead of casting about for a cure of the evil, we cease to cultivate crops which have proved so precarious and unprofitable. Hence our older States have almost wholly abandoned the growing of wheat; hence thousands of acres of vineyards have been uprooted; hence the stone fruits have almost totally gone out of cultivation in vast sections; hence the orchards are going to decay, because their uncertain crops are so small and worm-eaten as to become worthless; hence the cultivation of cotton is becoming hazardous and often ruinous to the planter.

The same is true of tobacco, potatoes, and turnips; even the humble currant is infested with a crawling spoliator that consumes the crop.

Why is all this? Clearly, in our judgment, because while politicians and placemen have been ever ready to extol the dignity and the nobility of the tiller of the soil, they have left him to plod along his weary way without any special stimulus to improve the processes and products of his calling. It is all very well to say in public orations, that lie who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before is a benefactor to his race; but what does it amount to? Suppose that some intelligent and thoughtful man devotes the best period of his life to experiments, and after years of labor and expense discovers a remedy for the diseases and disabilities now affecting the wheat crop in large sections of the country, or originates some variety of this grain that is proof against them - where is his reward ? Here is a case in point: The Rev. Mr. Goodrich devoted eleven years of his life, and expended large sums of money, in producing certain new varieties of the potato, from seed (not tubers) imported by him from Peru, the home of tuberosum solanum.

That, surely, was a laudable and philanthropic endeavor - a service to mankind worthy at least of national if not of universal countenance and assistance. When we reflect how largely the product of this plant enters into the comfort, the health, and the sustenance of the community; how its failure has involved, and continues to involve, thousands and tens of thousands in heavy losses; how it has repeatedly impoverished a whole people and brought dread famine to the doors of millions, one would suppose that the originator of a variety of this esculent that should be not only proof against rot, but immensely more productive than the kinds previously known, Would be voted a public benefactor, and enriched out of the national treasury. Not so, however. That worthy minister of the Gospel, who literally went about all the earth doing good, derived just one poor hundred dollars from the sale of his tubers, and four hundred dollars from the gratuities of agricultural societies. Like most great benefactors, he died poor, bequeathing to his wife and family the sole heritage of a good name.

Why was this? Millions of dollars have been realized by the propagation of his potatoes; why did not he come in for some share of this rich reward ? Simply because, like the honest, unselfish man he was, he proved the value of his tubers by disseminating them among societies and individuals throughout the country, either gratuitously or at a nominal price, to determine whether they were as valuable generally as they had proved with him. They proved invaluable, and those to whom they were sent speedily propagated an immense supply, which they sold at fabulous prices for their own personal advantage. Now, had we an agricultural department worthy of the great interests which it professes to conserve, this injustice would not have happened. Mr. Goodrich might have been protected in his discovery, and the profits to which he was so justly entitled would have gone into his own exhausted purse, to reimburse him for the years of pat nt research and heavy outlay which he had incurred for the benefit of his fellow-man.

Now we desire to suggest, and it seems to us that the accession of a new'chief to the agricultural bureau at Washington is a good opportunity to broach the subject, that what Congress has done for the literary man and the mechanic, that shall it do for the farmer, the florist, the horticulturist. Let there be, in connection with the agricultural bureau, an office of record, where the name, character, quality, description, etc., of new varieties of fruit and grain, originating in this country, shall be entered, and secured to the originator. Let specimens be sent to trustworthy correspondents of the bureau in various sections of the country, so that its value for general cultivation may be determined. Let the result thus arrived at be publicly announced under authority of the bureau, and the right to vend the article be vested in the originator, and his licensees for a term of years. Something of this kind would wonderfully stimulate to continued improvement in the production of choice varieties of plants and grains to the great advantage and profit of the country. While it would secure to the originator the just reward of his skill and labor, it would protect the public from a thousand impositions now put upon them by the venders of new varieties of untried and doubtful value.

As this business is now conducted, we have no hesitation in asserting that many thousands of dollars are annually thrown away in the purchase and planting of fruits, for example, which, however valuable they may have proved in their original locality, are totally unprofitable and useless for cultivation in other sections under an altered condition of soil and climate.

The case of Mr. Goodrich is by no means a solitary one. We know of many similar instances where other deserving horticulturists and agriculturists, who have devoted their best years to the public good, have had only their labor for their pains, other persons, to whom they have sent specimens of their plants, in various sections, to test their value, having stepped in to rob them of their reward. Every year the nurserymen of the country are mulcted in large sums of money for the purchase of new and professedly valuable plants, which too often prove of little or no value. These being sent out at extortionate prices, for general cultivation, and failing to answer the expectations excited by the glowing descriptions published of their merits, tend to discourage cultivators and bring the profession of Horticulture into disrepute. Were some such system adopted as we have suggested, however, the honest experimenter would be protected in the product of his labor, the prices of new plants would be set at a more reasonable figure, so as to be within the reach of all, because the originator would, instead of, as now, being compelled to realize his profits out of his first season's sales, be secured in their enjoyment for a term of years.

We presume that a royalty of one cent per bushel upon the potatoes grown from -Goodrich's seedlings for seven years would have made him and his family independent. Who shall say that such a reward was not richly merited? Who would feel that such a price for the enjoyment of the fruits of his labors was a burden ?

We know it may be urged that such a provision as this has never yet been incorporated into the patent laws of any nation; but of its necessity, its justice, there can be no question. As the United States, by its greater liberality to inventors, has stimulated the arts and sciences, and added to the industrial wealth and resources of our people more than any other government in the world, let it go one step farther, and, by judicious legislation, stimulate the husbandman to take rank among the highest order of productive agents, and elevate and dignify that profession which, however much lauded by poets and extolled by politicians as an ennobling one, has heretofore been of the earth, quite too earthy.