PLANT AFFINITIES 233 



inevitably produce, let us say, an apple tree, not 

 a pear tree or a plum, is beyond comprehension. 



Yet we know it to be true. 



And so the plant breeder who consciously 

 merges two different protoplasmic streams when 

 he brings the pollen of one flower to the pistil 

 of another, participates in what must be consid- 

 ered the most wonderful of all experiments. 



He brings tokens out of an almost infinite 

 past to blend with the divergent tokens of an- 

 other ancestral stream no less ancient. 



And it is not strange if he feels a certain im- 

 pulse of elation when reflecting that his conscious 

 efforts have thus brought together ancestral 

 tendencies that have long been separated and 

 that now will appear in new combinations 

 stimulating such interplay of life forces as 

 may bring into being plant forms that may be 

 described, without violence to the use of words, 

 as new creations. 



That the intimate record of cousin- 

 ship, in all its grades, should be 

 permanently fixed in the proto- 

 plasm of every living thing, is 

 a thought - compelling biological 

 revelation. 



