NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



changing the course of his life and making an 

 abrupt break in the generations of crime, so in 

 a gentler but none the less powerful manner 

 the plant must have the overpowering shock of 

 re-creation, it must irrevocably break with the 

 past. As in the case of the man, so with the 

 flower. The initial shock and subsequent 

 change may be followed by a reaction and a 

 return in some measure to the old order of 

 things ; but just as care and patience and wise 

 living and the higher aid may help the man 

 back and steady him in a course of right living, 

 so the plant, though it rebel at first, finally 

 becomes fixed in its new ways and starts 

 forward to enrich or glorify the world. 



The very least of Mr. Burbank's labor is the 

 actual breaking up of the plant's life by the 

 shock of re-creation, the vastest in its scope 

 that a life can bear, such shock as even death 

 does not bring, for it is death and life in one, 

 the death of the old and the birth of the new. 

 But this, however grave a change, is only an 

 incident in the work. He must study the 

 plant in all its relations. He must know its 

 past intimately. He must take into account 

 ten thousand past tendencies. He must look 



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