318 ESSENTIALS OF BOTANY 
flowers, as in the wheat or the apple, remove from the 
cluster all the flowers that are not to be operated on. 
(2) Open the flower and remove the stamens by taking 
hold of the filaments with fine forceps, or cut away all 
the stamens at once, as shown in Fig. 222. Then cover 
the flower or the entire twig with a paper bag until the 
stigma is mature. 
(8) Pollinate the stigma with the desired kind of pollen. 
This may be done with the finger tip, with a camel’s-hair 
brush, or other implement. It is safer to take pollen from 
a flower that has been kept covered with a paper bag, to 
keep off foreign pollen. 
(4) Cover the pollinated flower again with a paper bag 
until the fruit has grown considerably. 
397. General Results of Hybridizing. — As already men- 
tioned (Sect. 395), hybrids are likely to be extremely vari- 
able. Not only may they differ from either parent, but they 
may also be unlike each other. The differences include 
such features as the form, size, and other characteristics of 
the entire plant or of its roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruit, 
and seeds. 
It is much easier to perpetuate new varieties in the case 
of plants propagated by vegetative means than in those 
grown from seed. If a desirable variety of potato is ob- 
tained by hybridizing and then planting seeds from the 
berries (“potato balls”), the hybrid can be grown with 
certainty by planting tubers of the new variety. But if a 
hybrid bean, pea, or wheat plant is produced, only a few 
of its seeds will “come true to seed”; that is, the off- 
spring of the hybrid seeds will, many of them, be what 
breeders call “ rogues,” or undesirable varieties, not closely 
resembling their hybrid parent. Year after year, for several 
