HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;— GRAFTING 



customary Bartlett pears, the parent tree soon 

 took on a greatly increased vigor. Sometimes 

 the union of the graft and the tree will be 

 complete, but, as he puts it, in the great stress 

 of unusual drought or fruiting the grafted por- 

 tion will separate again, later, and entirely fall 

 off. Curious results are seen in some crosses, 

 as, for example, some plum -almond crosses 

 where there was every possible variation in the 

 flowers, — some of them having all stamens 

 and no pistils, some having many petals, some 

 having no petals, some never opening like 

 normal flowers at all, some having no stamens 

 but only pistils. Sometimes a cross of a peach 

 and an almond will produce a tree as large as 

 ten peach trees or almond trees of the same 

 age. Sometimes the precise opposite will be the 

 case. Now and then the graft grows up thrift- 

 ily and bears fruit, and its seeds are planted 

 with the result that none will grow. Mr. 

 Burbank says that a certain character, or char- 

 acteristic, may lie latent through many gene- 

 rations, or even centuries, and then appear just 

 when the right cross is made to bring it out. 



But probably the most mysterious thing 

 that has ever happened, in some ways at least, 



257 



