ON VARIATION 
thing—a new geranium plant, with an individual- 
ity, a personality, of its own—an infant geranium, 
which we for the first time have brought into being 
—a thing which has never lived before, yet which 
has within it all of the tendencies inherited from 
ages of ancestry—tendencies good and tendencies 
bad, which wait only on environment to determine 
which shall predominate. 
By the simple combination of the pollen and 
the egg we have produced an entirely new plant, 
which may, if we will it, become the founder of 
a whole race of new and better geraniums. 
How shall we go about it to make a combination, 
such as this, between the pollen dust and the seed- 
like egg so snugly stowed away within its nest? 
Let us examine that central stalk inside the 
double guard of pollen-bearing stamens and we 
shall have the answer. 
As the stamens fall away we begin to see a 
transformation in the stalk. Its upper end, which 
at first seemed single, now shows a tendency to 
divide into five curling tendrils—moist and sticky. 
Though we may plant pollen in the ground 
without result, we have but to place it on one of 
these sticky tendrils as they curl from the end of 
that central pistil stalk to start an immediate and 
rapid growth. 
[69] 
