NEW CREATIONS. 209 



more than a mere outline of what has been accomplished in 

 the realm of human creations in agriculture. The blackberry- 

 raspberry, which is neither blackberry nor raspberry; the 

 strawberry-blackberry, as distinct from one parent as from 

 the other; chestnuts with the burrs bred off; peach-almond 

 trees, attaining a growth of ten times that of the peach or 

 the almond during a corresponding length of time; the baby 

 bearing chestnut, not that the fruits are of diminutive size 

 but that the little plant begins to bear when only six months 

 old and not more than three feet high ; walnut trees which do 

 not bear at all, but which grow fully four times as fast as 

 any walnut known, faster, indeed, than any other tree of 

 any kind in the temperate zone; the walnuts which do bear, 

 the shells of the nuts of which were bred down so thin that 

 the birds picked holes through them, whereupon it was de- 

 cided to breed them backward to a slightly greater thickness 

 in order that the facility with which the shell might be broken 

 should not be a defect ; the ten-inch poppies ; the giant seven- 

 inch calla, as well as the smallest calla, only about an inch in 

 diameter; the ill-smelling dahlia deodorized and recharged 

 with the odor of the magnolia ; the magnificent five-inch daisy, 

 brought up from the dime-sized pest of the farmer's field; 

 the perennial rhubarb, tender in structure but giant in stalk 

 and leaf; the great prune, fully five times as large as the 

 French variety these are a few of the many things which are 

 of interest in this ever-extending field of investigation. 



Before closing this section of our story, however, the 

 changes which have been wrought in a desert plant, the cac- 

 tus, are of such possible economic importance as to deserve 

 something more than mere mention. The Great American 

 Desert, as the wide regions of our arid West have been 



