PLANNING A NEW PLANT 



At best, however, I am very often reminded 

 that each species has its own individuality and 

 that even the most familiar plant may hold 

 surprises in store for us. 



THE ROUGH SKETCH 



"But just how do you start out when you are 

 seeking to create a new form of plant life?" I am 

 constantly asked. 



And here again the answer is difficult. Every- 

 thing depends upon the ultimate object. If I am 

 seeking merely to test the possibilities of making 

 certain crosses, or as it were feeling my way 

 along new channels, I am more or less like a 

 person groping in the dark. 



This form of vague experimentation is often 

 full of interest. I have already given some 

 instances of what may come to pass when we 

 hybridize plants of widely separated species or 

 of different genera. The reader will recall the 

 case of the petunia with the tobacco habit and 

 of the dewberry crossed with such remote cousins 

 as apple and pear and mountain-ash. These 

 experiments were made without a clearly defined 

 object except to ascertain whether it was possible 

 to hybridize plants of such diverse character. 



And the results of the experiment, while of 

 very great scientific interest, were not practically 

 successful in a commercial sense. 



19] 



