LUTHER BURBANK 



ber, in spite of the old belief, which will combine 

 readily to produce fertile offspring constituting 

 a new species or a new genus. 



We shall find plants of different species or 

 genera which combine to make a sterile offspring 

 — a mule among plants. 



And we shall find plants which can hardly be 

 combined at all — plants in which the pollen of one 

 seems to act as a definite poison on the other — 

 plants with large pollen grains which cannot push 

 their tubes down the pistils of smaller flowers — 

 and plants which, through long fixed heredity, 

 seem as averse to combination as oil seems averse 

 to combining with water. 



"But no man," says Mr. Burbank, who has just 

 read this, "can tell until he has tried — tried not 



once, but thousands and thousands of times." 



***** 



"What is that?" asked a seedsman who was 

 visiting Mr. Burbank. 



"That is a Nicotunia," replied Mr. Burbank. 

 "and you are the first man in the world who has 

 ever seen one. It is the name which I have given 

 to a new race of plants produced bj' crossing the 

 large flowering nicotianas, or tobacco plants, with 

 petunias. It is, as you can see, a cross between two 

 genera of the nightshade family." 



"H'm!" said the seedsman. 



[240] 



