NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



The new plant may develop certain charac- 

 teristics like those of one parent, certain others 

 like those of the other parent. It may inherit 

 length of stem from one, breadth of leaf from 

 the other, or it may have stem and leaf wholly 

 unlike either. And this latter is frequently 

 the end sought, — to produce a different type 

 from that of either and from that produce by 

 long selection a type superior to either parent. 

 Very much of breeding is breaking up. 



I recall with interest a conversation with a 

 gentleman in the city of London concerning 

 the terrible depravity among the young men 

 of that city. There were at that time fully 

 eight hundred thousand young men in the 

 city between the ages of eighteen and twenty- 

 five. He was perhaps better acquainted with 

 the youth of the greatest city in the world 

 than any other man in it. He said, as the re- 

 sult of his years of experience, that, but for 

 the inflow of country blood into the veins of 

 London, London life would become practi- 

 cally extinct in three generations, — so vast 

 the vice. 



Just as this, and all other great cities, are 

 strengthened physically, mentally and, indeed, 



34 



