THEORY AND PRACTICE 



liancy of coloration and remarkable keeping quali- 

 ties. Some of them have been made to bear 

 double rows of petals. 



Here, then, it appears that not fewer than ten 

 separate and distinct qualities of the gladiolus 

 plant have been under consideration in the course 

 of Mr. Burbank 's experiments. It is obvious that 

 the plant breeder could not be satisfied unless the 

 good qualities were all combined in the same in- 

 dividual plant. It would not at all suffice that one 

 plant should have a hardy bulb while bearing 

 poor flowers; or that another plant should have 

 a splendid array of flowers on a frail stalk; or, 

 again, that flowers of great beauty should have 

 poor keeping quality. All the good qualities must 

 be combined in the same individual. 



Suppose that Mr. Burbank started with one 

 gladiolus plant having a splendid stalk, another 

 having an immune bulb, a third with flowers of 

 large size, a fourth with flowers of good keeping 

 quality, etc. He could combine the plants two 

 and two by cross-pollenizing ; and, by recombining 

 again and again, in the fourth generation he would 

 have blended the strains of all the ten original 

 parents. But, as we have seen, the chance that 

 any individual seedling of the next generation 

 would combine the desirable traits of the ten orig- 

 inal parent forms in just the right proportion 

 is only one in a million. 



That is why Mr. Burbank raises his seedlings 

 in such immense profusion. 



When the gladiolus experiments were under 

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