CHAPTER XXI. 



DO VARIETIES OF CARNATIONS DETERIORATE AND DIE?— 



CONTINUING LIFE BY CUTTINGS -A NATURAL AND 



VIRILE METHOD -AS PRESERVATIVE AS BY SEED 



—OFTEN THE PROCESS INVIGORATES 



WEAK SEEDLINGS 



EVERY variety of carnation has a distinct character of its 

 own. Ignorance of its requirement extinguishes varieties, 

 by not supplying their unvoiced necessities. The advocates 

 of the * 'Running Out" theorj^ start with the assumption that the 

 life of ever}' animal, tree and plant is bounded by infancy and 

 old age. This is true of individual organisms, but in no sense 

 applies to the life of varieties or species — men die, but the people 

 live forever. A carnation is a biennial plant, two years being the 

 duration of its life. We know the species has persisted over two 

 thousand years, it has renewed its life a thousand times and is 

 virile today as when Theophrastus picked up the little pendant in 

 the land of Leonadas and exclaimed in admiration, " Dio-anthus !" 

 It has been continued by seed. A cutting continues life in a new 

 organism, with new cells and fresh pabulum, as much so as if it 

 originated from a seed. Weakness attaches to both, more to 

 plants germinated from seeds than from cuttings. There is 

 more hereditary degeneracy enfolded in a seed; not one-fourth of 

 carnation seedlings have enough vigor to survive, the rest are en- 

 ervated, or lapse toward monopetalism, while nearly all cuttings 

 produce robust plants. Propagating by cuttings is a natural pro- 

 cess for continuing life. It is simply the segmentary method nature 

 adopts in many plants that are the most tenacious of life, and in 

 the agamic process in the Zoophyte order of animals. A tomato 

 plant from a cutting will produce thirty per cent more fruit than 

 from a seed. Nature never inaugurated a law of decadence tor 



