OTHER USEFUL PLANTS 73 



I first made experiments with seedling sugar 

 cane in my own greenhouses, and when reports 

 of these were made, received letters from the 

 various sugar-growing regions of the world, ask- 

 ing for further information, and now there are 

 several well-equipped experiment stations en- 

 gaged in the work of raising and testing sugar 

 cane seedlings. 



APPLYING THE NEW KNOWLEDGE 



The reader will at once recall the case of the 

 Burbank potato, which is in all respects compa- 

 rable. There, also, a plant that ordinarily does 

 not produce seed was found by exception to be 

 fertile, and the plants grown from the seed 

 showed the widest departure from the form of 

 the parent plant, and constituted the progenitors 

 of a new and improved variety. 



The obvious explanation is that the seeds owed 

 their existence to the union of two plant strains, 

 one represented by the staminate and the other by 

 the pistillate flower, that must necessarily be 

 somewhat divergent. The bringing together of 

 the two racial strains results, as we have seen 

 illustrated over and over, in the giving of renewed 

 vigor or vitality to the offspring, and in the pro- 

 duction of variation through the new assorting 

 and recombination of characters, some of which 



