NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



the point where the skill of the operator 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 to 

 guide it into a condition of refinement and 

 beauty sufficient to adorn any occasion." 



One of the rarest flowers Mr. Burbank 

 has ever produced met a tragic fate. It 

 was a most beautiful and delicately tinted 

 flower upon a vine of exquisite greenness, 

 a vine which would be suited admirably for 

 interior decoration or for use in masses 

 upon lawns. It was a hybrid mesembryan- 

 themum, a plant whose habit is to open its 

 beautiful flowers in the sunshine but to close 

 them when the dark weather comes on. The 

 hybrid, while like its ancestors in some general 

 characters, was still unique among flowers, 

 and Mr. Burbank set great store by it. One 

 morning a workman in the part of the 

 grounds where the flower was growing dis- 

 covered that every plant, wherever it was 

 located — some being in one part of the 

 grounds, some in another — had met simul- 

 taneous death at the hands of some mys- 



170 



