HOW TO PRODUCE NEW FLOWERS. 11 



found study of the life and habits of plants, both domesticated and wild, 

 we are surprised to see how much they are like children. Study their 

 wants; help them to what they need; be endlessly patient; be honest with 

 them, carefully correcting each fault as it appears, and in due time they 

 will reward you bountifully for every care and attention, and make your 

 heart glad in observing the results of your work. Weeds are weeds be- 

 cause they are jostled, crowded, cropped, and trampled upon, scorched by 

 fierce heat, starved, or perhaps suffering with cold, wet feet, tormented 

 by insect pests, or by lack of nourishing food and sunshine. Most 

 of them have no opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious beauty 

 and abundance. A few are so fixed in their habits that it is better to 

 select an individual for adoption and improvement from a race which 

 is more pliable. This stability of character can not often be known 

 except by careful trial, therefore members from several races at the sanu- 

 time may be selected with advantage; the most pliable and easily edu- 

 cated ones will soon make the fact manifest by showing a tendency to 

 "'break" or vary slightly, or perhaps profoundly, from the wild state. 

 Any variation should be at once seized upon, and numerous seedlings 

 .raised from this individual. In the next generation one or several, even 

 more, marked variations will be almost certain to appear, for when a 

 plant once wakes up to the new influences brought to bear upon it, the 

 road is opened for endless improvement in all directions, and the operator 

 finds himself with a wealth of new forms which is almost as discourag- 

 ing to select from as in the first place it was to induce the plant to vary 

 in the least, and now comes the point where the skill of the originator 

 is put to the severest test. When a wild plant has been induced to 

 change its old habits, fixed by ages of uniform environment, it needs 

 some one with a steady hand at the helm to guide its bark into a new 

 and more prosperous port and into a condition of refinement and beauty 

 sufficient to adorn any occasion. 



Besides selection, another important factor in the production of new 

 flowers is in the amalgamation of the best qualities of two or more 

 species or varieties by crossing, but crossing quite as often produces 

 plants with all the faults of both parents as all their virtues. Its 

 chief value is in breaking up the fixed character of any type. Then, by 

 careful selection of the best through several generations, more advance- 

 ment may often be made in a few years than could be made in a century 

 if the fixed type had not been broken up by this crossing of types or 

 species. But crossing is of little use unless followed by very careful 

 selections of the best, and not only the best, but a certain type of the 

 best should be kept in view, and all plants which do not closely follow 

 the chosen type should be weeded out as soon as their vagrant character 

 appears ; thus in annuals fixed types may be produced, but in perennials, 



