"SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST." Ill 



her creations, but has written "virility" over the gateway of every 

 avenue of life. Propagating by cuttings is not devitalizing, but 

 still varieties are extinguished. The interest in new varieties 

 works neglect in old ones, hereditary weakness and insidious 

 disease follows in their wake and correspondingly in their merits. 



Their is no biological law known, why any variety of healthy 

 carnations might not live forever under persistent sanitary reg- 

 ulations, and be as immortal as the fabled Phenix bird that lives 

 singly, but burns itself at stated times on a pyre of spices to rise 

 again from the ashes rejuvenated and persistent. 



W. R. Shelmire, a critical and observing grower, thinks 

 propagating by cuttings invigorates the constitution of varieties 

 and in support of the assertion instances Buttercup, Swayne, 

 Lamborn, Century, Tidal Wave, and other varieties that had 

 more robust constitutions when they were supplanted by better 

 kinds than when they were first introduced. 



A secret and mysterious fatality has waited on many new 

 and promising carnations. There is a recurrence of some occult 

 hereditary weakness that makes them the prey of bacteriosis, or 

 some other disease. Edna Craig began life most auspiciously. It 

 was disseminated with a blare of trumpets, but was struck 

 with an enfeebling palsy and sank into a soon-forgotten grave. 

 This was the case with "Uncle John," "Stuart," and a score 

 of others that possessed great expectation It is said the good die 

 young. 



When new and better kinds of carnations are introduced, no 

 one is censurable for neglecting old ones; it is the unconscious 

 execution of Nature's law of the ''Survival of the fittest.'" Life 

 lives in cells. They are the units of life in a cutting as in a seed. 

 Both are divorced from the parent plant and bide by nature to con- 

 tinue destiny. The only difference science sees between a cut- 

 ting and a seed, one continues existing life, the other starts a new 

 one, and age is more robust and virile than infancy. 



Buttercup is the product of the first humble parents of 

 Alegatiere's new species of carnations imported to America. It 

 has renewed its life near a third of a century by cuttings since 



