HOW PLANTS HAVE BEEN IMPROVED BY MAN 159 



stalk, the seed may possibly give us a new wheat-plant 

 with the good points of both kinds. 



9. When you learn that from je2,000,000 to 

 ^3,000,000 are lost to Australia every year by rust in 

 wheat, you will see how interesting and how important 

 are problems of this kind*, In the same way, a dull- 

 looking apple of good flavour may be crossed with an 

 apple of handsome colour, in the hope that a new 

 apple may be got that is good both in flavour and 

 colour. 



10. From hedge-rose to garden rose. Among 

 the flowers, new kinds are being made in this way, 

 every year. Many of our best roses, indeed, are less 

 than 20 years old; and hundreds of gardeners are 

 still working at the problem of joining together in one 

 rose the finest form, the finest colour and the finest 

 scent. The hedge-rose has a charm of its own, but 

 what a distance separates it from Maman Cochet or 

 the Bride ! One of the greatest difficulties of the rose 

 grower is to preserve scent in the improved rose. 



11. Improvement by budding and grafting. Then 

 there are the methods of improvement by budding 

 and grafting. You are now able to understand those 

 methods quite easily. We saw that a hew bud is 

 formed between every new leaf and the stem. By the 

 end of December, the new bud is generally ripe enough 

 to be shifted from one tree to another. 



12. Budding. First of all, you make a perpend- 

 icular slit about one inch long in the bark of the tree 



*Tlie Grovernments of New South Wales and Victoria are working together 

 over problems of this kind, and already with good results. See article in 

 ** The Journal of Agriculture " p. 415 by Mr. D. McAlpine. 



