Fixing Good Traits 



How TO Hold a Result 

 Once Achieved 



IT IS traditional that you cannot teach an old 

 dog new tricks. The maxim applies with full 

 force to old plants. You may bend the twig 

 and make a permanent twist in the future tree; 

 but the hardened stock of the matured branch 

 will return persistently if bent, and will break 

 rather than change its form. 



Now there is something like the same differ- 

 ence in flexibility between young and old races of 

 plants. Here is a variety of plant that has been 

 developed in the orchard or garden, under man's 

 influence, in the course of the past few generations. 

 It tends to vary, and its progeny may be made 

 to adapt themselves to different conditions; by 

 selection, they may be developed into divers and 

 sundry new races. 



But yonder palm tree has no such propensity 

 to vary. Its ancestors have remained substantially 



[Volume III— Chapter VII] 



