BREVITIES. 155 



It is an irrevocable law -of nature, and demonstrated by ex- 

 perience, that it requires a definite number of units of heat, light 

 and moisture for any vegetable organism to reach maturity, and 

 round the object of its existence. One great desire of carnation 

 growers is to obtain carnation flowers earlier in the season than 

 the plants have commonly afforded them. If the above is a 

 sound law in vegetable physiology, does it not contain a solution 

 of the problem of early carnation flowers ? How is it possible for 

 a carnation starting its life in February or March, and carried on 

 any lines approximating the nature of the plant, to receive the 

 number of units of heat and light that nature could afford it dur- 

 ing its vegetative season between Maich and November? 



The flowering, or reproductive, period of its life is well under- 

 stood. It is its vegetative era that embodies the rebus for early 

 flowers. Growing carnations under glass, with greater or less 

 success, is a supremely abnormal and artificial method. If the car- 

 nation's life was started in August or September and carried health- 

 fully forward with approximately normal environments, would 

 it not have time to husband the units required for the puberty 

 of its vegetative life, and start with flowers correspondingly earlier 

 on its reproductive era ? If it would not, the assumed law is at 

 fault, for nature makes no mistakes. If the law is sound, a ma- 

 tured biennial carnation plant could be benched the first of July, 

 ready to start on its lyric of life begetments of which flowers are 

 the proem and embryos in seed the appendix. 



A ripened carnation plant is one that has finished the first 

 season's growth, elaborated itsjuices,crystalizedand deposited in its 

 medulla and the interstices of its tissues the protein compounds to 

 sustain a coming life fraught with the loftiest purpose of it being. 

 The desire and destiny with man is to live beyond the grave. The 

 object and purpose of a plant is to survive beyond its limit of life, 

 in embryonic seeds. 



The puberty of a biennial carnation plant is the somnolent 

 period, the coma of winter's cold, the change in its vital functions 

 from vegetative to reproductive forces, between existing and persist- 



