QUANTITY PRODUCTION 



plant in a hundred. And this, obviously, is a most 

 important consideration, especially with rare 

 foreign seeds or seeds produced by hybridizing 

 experiments that have involved exceptional care 

 and labor. To such priceless stock, any amount 

 of time and labor may be given ungrudgingly. 

 And even in planting commoji nursery stock one 

 soon learns that a thorough knowledge of the 

 requirements of the plants is essential to success, 

 and that cheap, careless work is always the most 

 expensive in the end. 



A perusal of the foregoing pages will perhaps 

 serve, better than almost any other exposition, 

 short of inspection of the work itself, to give the 

 reader an inkling of the enormous amount of 

 mere mechanical labor — ^in addition to ceaseless 

 watching and patient waiting — required to bring 

 the seedling plant through the time of its tender 

 infancy. When it is further reflected that seed- 

 lings must be handled by thousands; and that this 

 care is, after all, only one of many essential stages 

 of each individual series of experiments in 

 plant development, perhaps a fairly clear notion 

 will be gained of the laborious — even though 

 fascinating — character of the task that confronts 

 the person who would develop a new fruit, a 

 flower of modified color, or a plant of altered 

 structure. 



[143] 



