Some ingenious writer will one day favor the world with a volume whose title should be "The Curiosities of Horticulture." Neither literature, the sciences, the mechanic arts, nor any of the multitudinous occupations to which the human mind has been directed, contain more striking instances of curious discoveries than have been made in agriculture and its kindred pursuits. It is true that none of these have so extensively revolutionized the industrial world as did the cotton gin or the power loom. The masses who cultivate the fields or decorate the garden form but a portion of the great aggregate of humanity. Yet each subdivision of terra-culture has a world of its own, in which discoveries have from time to time been made, as sensational within its limited atmosphere as was that of either steamboat or telegraph to the whole. Of these, the reaping machine was a triumph whose far-reaching value it would be difficult to estimate. Vast fortunes have fallen to the lot of the originators of many of these discoveries.

Hence the yet unexhausted field of agricultural and horticultural invention continues to be explored by other minds in search of new devices for the better accomplishment of old processes, knowing that the world is waiting for them, and that they will be sure of being rewarded.

So has it ever been in horticulture, and so will it continue to be. The history of this world-wide art abounds in curiosities, personal, pecuniary, mechanical, and scientific. Its chapters of vicissitudes and failures would be long and painful ones; but, like the huge jumble of obsolete models on the dusty shelves of the Patent Office, they would be full of instruction, as well as of warning, to those who are to succeed us. Of its successes there would be brilliant and encouraging records; for it is remarkable what fortunate results have been realized from small beginnings. A century ago only four pinks were known to English florists, all which were very different flowers. James Major, a ducal gardener, bethought him that he would sow a few seeds, from which he succeeded in raising a few plants. When coming into bloom the following season, one of them proved to be the first double pink that had ever been seen. Great as was the superiority of this flower, its originator regarded it only as the forerunner of still more brilliant varieties which time and -attention would enable him to produce. All these anticipations have been realized in the ex tent and beauty of this attractive family of flowers.

The advent of this first double pink created a sensation in the floral world of England a century ago. Major was offered ten guineas for, the plant, but declined selling, and proceeded the next season to multiply the stock. The result of one year's care was a profit of £80, - a great sum in the pocket of a gardener a hundred years ago.

The stimulating hope of reward is infinitely more potent now. Public taste has been educated to the highest point of appreciation, and wealth has become so extensively diffused, that floriculture receives its full share of an unprecedentedly lavish expenditure. Novelties are appreciated and sought for, hence ail classes are ambitious to originate them on their own grounds, or to discover them in the remote and waste places of the earth. The great European florists have their botanists swarming over distant countries in perpetual search after new flowers. They have thus made the whole world tributary to a constantly increasing public demand. Enormous expenses are encountered in maintaining these expeditions, but the universal call for fresh varieties renders the result , a profitable one. It was these floral missionaries who caused Mexico to yield up the cactus and the dahlia. Their labors under tropical suns have made England gorgeous with flowers, for nearly all she has are exotics. Southern Europe gave her the rose; America, the honeysuckle and passion flower; Hungary, the laburnum; Italy, the daffodil; while lavender, rosemary, and mignonette were also from the south of Europe. The catalogue of English fruits will also show how largely she has been benefited by foreign lands.

Italy grave her the mulberry; Syria, the plum and apple; Flanders, the cherry, gooseberry, and strawberry; Greece, the apricot and currant; Portugal, the grape; Persia, the peach and nectarine; and America, the raspberry and walnut.

But other countries have shared in this system of international exchange of fruit and flower. Our own fields and gardens are crowded with precious contributions from foreign lands, yet the unsatisfied appetite for novelties of all kinds increases, because the circle interested in them is annually widening. As the wealth of our country accumulates, so is our ability to indulge in horticultural pursuits enlarged. A crowd of able publications devoted to the science act as educators and stimulants. Architecture contributes its ornamental designs for rural embellishment and comfort, and great wastes of stunted oak and brushwood are transformed by practiced hands into charming landscapes, wherein Flora and Pomona may find ever-fragrant and ever-fruitful homes.

There is an expectant multitude for every novelty the earth can be made to produce, whether it be useful or ornamental. If the originator of a pink receives an abundant reward, we may be assured that there is profit for the fortunate genius who first astonishes the world with a new and better squash. Plebeian though the latter may be, it might still prove as rich a speculation as a new rose, seeing that there are hungry multitudes as prone to squashes as to roses. They have stomachs which, with painful regularity, require to be filled; and these unwashed masses keep fat and hearty without developing even the most latent taste for flowers. The discoverers of the useful thus also have their reward. But few of us have the remotest idea of the skill, the patient waiting through years of trials and of proving, which the painstaking originators of even new vegetables are required to exercise and endure, after all to find themselves disappointed We hear of the successes, but of the multitude of failures no sign is made.

It is universally admitted that the laborer is worthy of his hire, - the inventor, of his reward. I have been thinking over the proposal of my friend Fuller, that the originator of a new plant should be protected in his discovery by patent. The propriety of such protection strikes me as being eminently just. A man will devote years of patient watchfulness and skill in the production of a new and valuable variety of fruit or flower, and his reward is limited by the sale of such stock as he may choose to accumulate before offering his discovery to the public. When once in possession of the latter, it is multiplied in winter and summer, every conceivable forcing process being instantly invoked to manufacture a world-wide supply. The originator receives but an indifferent reward ; and though he may seek for a fair one by demanding high prices, yet this strictly honorable effort is unsparingly denounced as an extortion. Instances have been known of a new fruit having been stolen from the grounds of the originator, and secretly multiplied until he brought it into market, when the dishonest competition robbed him of a large share of what he had laboriously earned.

The Government protects the inventor of a clothes-pin or a goose yoke by a patent running seventeen years. These implements are merely new developments of old processes. The materials composing them are well known, and are common property, the production of nature, whether of wood or metal. It is from these that the inventor fashions and combines his new device, which, because of its being new and useful, is secured to him by patent. He may fill warehouses with his improved goose yokes, refuse to sell them to an impatient public, and no one dare manufacture them, except at his peril. When he does sell, no one but himself can produce them, unless by license. His monopoly of the market for goose yokes is absolute, and can not be broken up except by some more ingenious mind inventing a different and better one. The most trifling mechanical contrivances have thus become stepping-stones to fortune. How little ingenuity it required to invent the goose yoke or the clothes - pin yet the Government protected that little, and the protection secured rich rewards. Not so with the originators of new and better fruits and flowers.

They labor in this vocation year after year, concentrating upon their efforts the experience and skill of a lifetime, and not succeeding oftener than once in five hundred trials. Even when signally successful, their reward is too often far below their merits. Take the Albany Seedling Strawberry as an illustration. Here is a fruit of untold value to the nation, the unquestioned offspring of a single individual. That berry must have enriched hundreds of fruit-growers, and is destined to enrich thousands. But who can say that its originator received the reward to which he was entitled, or give the world a history of the time, and labor, and patient waiting which he went through before he succeeded in his great discovery? There may be difficulties in the way of carrying Mr. Fuller's programme int6 practice, but they may be overcome. As the law now stands, no one can manufacture a patented article without a license from, the patentee. Let the inventor of a new plant receive his patent for it. When he sells the plants, let him also require payment for the right to manufacture and sell other plants in a specified territory. If it be valuable, the purchaser of the right to that territory may dispose of rights to others, and thus refund himself for what he paid the patentee.

Should the plant be offered for sale beyond the limits of the territory sold, the patentee will become aware of it, and can prosecute for infringement, precisely as in the case of a machine or process. There ought to be no difficulty in having Mr. Fuller's excellent suggestion adopted. At first sight it will strike many as an absurd and impracticable novelty. But let its fairness. and justice be once admitted, and then make it law. It is protection alone that has given to American ingenuity its present mighty progress in the arts. Extend that protection to the arts of horticulture and floriculture, and an inconceivable impulse will be given to the highest development of both.