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Ranked in order of relative importance, the greatest factors in the incidence of disease in plants and animals are feeding, environment, heredity, and infection. Consideration of the first, second, and third helps in prevention; consideration of the fourth involves treatment. Rather than being forced into the position of needing to fight disease, every possible preventive measure should be adopted. Each rose plant has some degree of inherent resistance to every disease.

Health and life are intimately co-related, and plants have no greater ability than animals to live on chemical foods. The protoplasm of every cell of every creature still hides the secret of life and inherent resistance to disease. It is something more than genes, hormones, vitamins, and atomic energy. The ideal, in supplying plants with all requirements in balanced proportions and available forms, is most nearly approached by decomposed vegetable matter. Burning not only alters the chemistry of its constituents, but probably destroys or greatly diminishes the undiscovered factor so vital to life.

Overfeeding with any one element can lead to increased susceptibility to disease just as can underfeeding. Drainage and ample soil moisture are imperative.

Inherent resistance to black spot infection was greatly lessened by hybridization with R. lutea. Pedro Dot and Pernet-Ducher have sent us many such hybrids, and a large percentage of them have failed in our coastal areas because of marked susceptibility to black spot with consequent defoliation and die-back. Yet those same varieties grow well in the raisers' nurseries on the Mediterranean littoral, which has a climate resembling that of our coasts. Most of these varieties of roses grow well behind our mountain ranges. The difference in behaviour appears to be due to altered soil foods as well as climatic conditions.

Rose diseases and pests, when listed, may appear a terrifying and discouraging array of troubles for a beginner in rose-growing, but he should remember that these are only some of the plant diseases present in Australia; that the rose overseas is attacked by diseases unknown to us here; that the rose is one of the most disease-resistant of all garden plants; and that, although it is helpful to be able to recognize each disease, none is of any serious consequence except rose wilt, mildew, black spot, aphis, thrips, the die-back-symptom group, the scales, and the caterpillars. These should be controlled to the best of one's ability, and it is important to know which sprays or dusts to apply to get best results. It would be useless to apply a spray that may be very good in controlling mildew, believing that it is "good for roses", and that it will, therefore, kill thrips, black spot, scales, and every other disease and pest that may or may not be affecting the roses. It is equally useless to spray at wrong times, or to fail to realize that some diseases can be avoided by prophylactic spraying, whereas no curative measures for them are of any value. Many rose-growers waste time, energy, and money on sprays, often doing more harm than good. Of course, others err in never spraying, but plants of other types in those gardens will be diseased as well as the roses.