Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/371

Rh cases, reproduce faithfully the parents, but will produce a very variable lot of individuals, most of them strongly reversionary in character. Grow peach trees from the stones of your favorite peach and see what manner of peaches you get; but if you want to be sure of more peaches like the ones you enjoy, graft scions from your tree on to other trees. Indeed one of the plant-breeder's favorite methods of making a start for new things, of getting the requisite beginning wealth and eccentricity of variation, is to grow seedlings, especially from cross-bred varieties. Burbank will give you a thousand dollars for a pinch of horse-radish seed. Sugar-cane seed is needed. The amelioration of many kinds of fruit and flowers and vegetables is checked, because in our carelessness we have allowed these kinds to get into that condition of seedlessness which almost all cultivated races tend toward when grown from cuttings. In our oranges and grape-fruit and in a score of other fruits, the elimination of seeds is exactly one of the modifications we have bred and selected for, in order to make the fruits less troublesome in their eating. But when we lose the seeds entirely of a whole group of related plant kinds we may find ourselves, as we have found ourselves actually in many cases, at the end of our powers of amelioration of these plant sorts. Burbank believes that the very fact that plants when grown asexually always sooner or later lose their power to produce seeds is almost sufficient proof (if such proof is needed) that acquired characters are transmitted.

Another of Burbank's open secrets of success is the great range of his experimentation—nothing is too bold for him to attempt, the chances of failure are never too great to frighten him. And another secret is the great extent, as regards material used, of each experiment. His beds of seedlings contain hundreds, often thousands, of individuals where other men are content with hundreds. Another element in his work is his prodigality of time. Experiments begun twenty years ago are actually still under way.

In all that I have so far written, I have purposely kept to general statements applicable to Burbank's work as a whole. My readers might be more interested, perhaps, to have some illustrations of the application of various processes of making new sorts of things, some analytical account of the history of various specific 'new creations,' but considerations of space practically forbid this. Just a few briefly described examples must suffice. More than is generally imagined, perhaps, Burbank uses pure selection to get new things. From the famous golden orange colored California poppy (Escholtzia) he has produced a fixed new crimson form by selection alone. That is, noticing, somewhere, sometime, an Escholtzia individual varying slightly redder, he promptly took possession of it, raised young poppies from its seeds,