NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



pre-natal influences are immeasurably more 

 powerful than the physical ones. So that 

 while the future no doubt holds much for the 

 good of the race in the matter of an improved 

 human stock, these influences are at present, 

 at least, far too diverse and powerful to be 

 mastered or even taken clearly into account. 

 A single and apparently very slight thing may 

 influence a whole human life, indeed, may 

 influence many lives directly and indirectly 

 through generations. Not so with a tree. Its 

 life is more fixed and stable. It has been fol- 

 lowing the same influences and never depart- 

 ing to any extent from a given course for 

 centuries upon centuries. It does not yield 

 easily. It is stubborn, persistent, it must be 

 pressed upon harder and harder. 



" But when it yields, it yields unreservedly. 

 Supply the right amount of pressure and the 

 thing is done. Then, when its new life is fixed, 

 it will persist in the new way as it has in the 

 old. Take, for example, a tree which produces 

 pitch, or maple -sugar, or tannin, or camphor, 

 or quinine. Now if the ability of any one of 

 these trees for producing its valuable product 

 is fixed, but its capacity meager, this capacity 



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