l^tSEXUAL I.IFE IN CARNATIONS. Il5 



cause their sap circulates only unisexual cells, and bud variations 

 cannot happen unless their is a vital union of diverse sexual cells 

 to work the variation. Strains of plants are produced by high 

 cultural methods, but varieties are the product of sexual forces in 

 the secret cr^^pt of conception. 



Sports carry into their constitution tonic and atonic hereditary 

 forces, the same as seedlings. Some are weaker than the parent 

 plant, others stronger, as is Chicago, a sport of Mrs. Bradt. It has 

 a more robust constitution and impressive color than its mother 

 plant. Artificial manipulation has cau.sed carnations to produce 

 more offsprings by this abnormal method than any other class of 

 plants. 



Carnations are largely rendered sterile by cross-fertilization 

 and cultural methods, and carried farther from their normal line 

 of hfe than any other class of plants. Nature's most heroic effort 

 is to continue life when it is threatened with extinction. Culture 

 and selection has largely aborted the stamens and pistils in car- 

 nations, destroyed or atrophied these organs of generation, elimi- 

 nated seed and their power to continue their species. Their ex- 

 istence is threatened, their life is in peril; in three years there 

 would not be a remontant carnation in existence if all art was 

 withdrawn from them. 



Nature feeling the terrors of impending extinction provides 

 other avenues for continuing existence and substitutes them for 

 the ones art has closed. She makes the type easily continued by 

 cuttings, and varieties common by the fission of sexual cells in the 

 germ of a new branch at the nodes of the plant. The banana 

 was once a seeding plant; evolution changed it to a seedless one. 

 It now carries in its fleshy fruit only vestiges of aborted seeds by 

 which it once was propagated. For the abolished method nature 

 substitutes offsets as the means for its continuance. 



Horticulture abolished seed for perpetuating the potato, then 

 Nature placed the germs for persisting its life in the structure of 

 its tubers. As art aborts the fecundity of carnations, nature 

 supplies the defects. 



