LUTHER BURBANK 



duplicating nature's method, and illustrating on 

 a small scale the principles of evolution through 

 which all living organisms have been developed. 



In making practical application of these meth- 

 ods in the flower garden, you may select whatever 

 plants are found there, almost at random. There 

 is no race of cultivated flowers that does not offer 

 opportunities for improvement through hybridiza- 

 tion and selection. Of course you must work, in 

 any given experiment, with species that are not 

 too widely separated; otherwise your efforts at 

 hybridization will be futile. You cannot hope, 

 for example, to hybridize a rose and a dahlia. 

 But you may hybridize the different species of 

 roses among themselves or one dahlia with an- 

 other, and in either case you will be fairly certain 

 to produce forms that are different in some regard 

 from the parent forms, offering opportunity for 

 further improvement by selection. 



But although, as a rule, plants cannot be hy- 

 bridized unless somewhat closely related, experi- 

 ment may reveal unexpected affinities, even be- 

 tween species belonging to different genera. Mr. 

 Burbank has made a large number of very wide 

 crosses, some of which have already been referred 

 to. The interesting hybrid between the tobacco 

 and the petunia may be recalled as an instance in 

 point. 



The curious plants that resulted from this union 

 were some of them of upright growth like the to- 

 bacco, others of trailing habit like the petunia. 

 It was said of them facetiously that they were 



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