LUTHER BURBANK 



of seedlings for one that differs by a shade from 

 the others. It is a case of selecting two or three 

 or a dozen individual plants that present features 

 that attract the experimenter; and selecting their 

 seed to be planted the following year in individual 

 plots, that the experiment may be carried forward, 

 generation after generation, just as before so far 

 as principles are concerned but very differently 

 as regards results, inasmuch as now there is the 

 most striking departure in each successive gen- 

 eration from the characteristics of the parent form. 



How wide the departure may be within a few 

 generations is well manifested by the dahlias, since 

 these plants, as we have already learned, have all 

 been developed in the space of about a century 

 from wild originals. Moreover, by no means 

 are many generations represented as might be 

 supposed, inasmuch as the dahlia is propagated 

 usually from the bulb, and it is only now and 

 again that an experimenter has taken the plant in 

 hand to raise it from the seed and separate out 

 new varieties. 



That a plant which in its wild form is an ordi- 

 nary sort of composite not very different from 

 the Black-Eyed-Susans and allied sunflower-like 

 plants that abound by every roadside could be 

 developed in a comparatively short series of gen- 

 erations into the extraordianry flower with solid 



[20] 



