BREEDING FOR PERFUME 



the magnolia while still retaining all its other 

 good qualities; and then he knew that the 

 battle was won. It might be long until the 

 perfumed dahlia was fully fixed, and longer 

 yet to introduce the new flower to the world, 

 but the chief object had been reached, the 

 offensive odor had been driven out and in its 

 place had been established a rare and lasting 

 perfume: it was the working of a modern 

 miracle. 



" It is not so difficult," Mr. Burbank says of 

 the new scented dahlia, "to teach a plant to 

 transmit other characteristics, and, once its 

 new traits have been fixed, it has no difficulty 

 in keeping on in the new way. When the 

 dahlia once learned to be double, for example, 

 and had had a term of years in which to fix 

 itself in this new form, it was easy enough to 

 go onward in the same way. But it was a new 

 thing for the dahlia to change its odor, it took 

 a long time for it to get used to it. All its life 

 habits through thousands of generations had 

 to be broken up. It was its lifelong habit to 

 bear a disagreeable odor. It was no ordinary 

 thing in its life to make the change; it could 

 not easily give up its old ways. At first, prob- 



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