a 3 4 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



sufficient reach and breadth to reveal the principle in the 

 plenitude of its possibilities. Where the old experimenters 

 labored with but few specimens, or patiently developed their 

 products from a single plant, the seedsman and the horticul- 

 turist of to-day employs a hundred thousand, not infrequently 

 half a million. Where the earlier explorers into this prom- 

 ising land waited, just as Nature has always waited, for the 

 appearance of some striking fortuitous variation, for some 

 sport or monstrosity that should be deemed worthy of serving 

 as the parent plant in a process of selection, the human cre- 

 ator of to-day proceeds to throw a bomb in the shape of un- 

 accustomed and unexpected pollen into the deep and secret 

 recesses of a plant's life, breaking up its old habits and ex- 

 ploding into actuality and visibility the new forms in an almost 

 multitudinous prodigality. 



Let us review for a moment the structure of a flower, for 

 herein are the reproductive organs of the plant the elements 

 upon which, in the last analysis, both Nature and man must 

 rely. Flowers of the more common form, as those of the or- 

 ange, the pear and the tomato, will serve as illustrations, 

 though of course, considering the vegetable family as a whole, 

 there are many modifications and" departures from these types. 

 First then, taking the bud just before it has opened, there 

 is the envelope, which consists of a double whorl of modified 

 leaves, the outer, called the calyx, being commonly green like 

 the foliage, while the inner, the corolla, is usually of some 

 bright color other than green. Within the envelope thus 

 formed are the essential elements the stamens and pistils, 

 the latter standing at the very center of the flower. The 

 stamens, of which there are usually several, are composed of 

 a slender stock or stem called the filament, which terminates 



