LUTHER BURBANK 



If you wish to keep your strain of melons or 

 squashes pure, you should carry pollen from one 

 flower to another with the finger tip or with a 

 camePs-hair brush, and then cover the flowers 

 with a paper sack until they are past the time of 

 receptivity. 



On the other hand, if you wish to experiment 

 with varying races of melons or squashes, you 

 have but to leave the work of cross-fertilization 

 to the bees, and your seeds next season will give 

 you as strange and variant a lot of material as 

 you could desire. But there is no such difficulty 

 with the peas and beans. These, as just stated, 

 are protected against cross-fertilization by the 

 character of their flower, and thus it is compara- 

 tively easy to maintain a pure strain, once it is 

 established. 



HYBEIDIZING PEAS AND BEANS 



If you wish, however, to extend your experi- 

 ments with peas and beans, causing them to vary 

 and thus to supply new material for selection, you 

 may readily do so by the method of artificial 

 pollenation. For although the floral envelope is 

 closed against the bee, you may readily enough 

 open it, and the pollenizing of the flower then pre- 

 sents no difficulties. You may pluck away the 

 stamens and deposit pollen from another flower 

 on the pistil, precisely as you would do in the 

 case of any other blossom. 



Tie a string loosely about the stem on which 

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