NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
changing the course of his life and making an 
abrupt break in the generations of crime, so in 
a gentler but none the less powerful manner 
the plant must have the overpowering shock of 
re-creation, it must irrevocably break with the 
past. As in the case of the man, so with the 
flower. The initial shock and subsequent 
change may be followed by a reaction and a 
return in some measure to the old order of 
things; but just as care and patience and wise 
living and the higher aid may help the man 
back and steady him in a course of right living, 
so the plant, though it rebel at first, finally 
becomes fixed in its new ways and _ starts 
forward to enrich or glorify the world. 
The very least of Mr. Burbank’s labor is the 
actual breaking up of the plant’s life by the’ 
shock of re-creation, the vastest in its scope 
that a life can bear, such shock as even death 
does not bring, for it is death and life in one, 
the death of the old and the birth of the new. 
But this, however grave a change, is only an 
incident in the work. He must study the 
plant in all its relations. He must know its 
past intimately. He must take into account 
ten thousand past tendencies. He must look 
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