THE CREATION OF NEW TREES 
possible to produce trees at will for practi- 
cally any purpose,—for ornamentation, for 
shade, for fuel, for manufacturing purposes; 
to breed together trees from widely separated 
quarters of the globe, each having some de- 
sirable characteristic the other has not, uniting 
the best of both in the child of the two, and 
then selecting and selecting through a series 
of years until the desired end is reached. 
Hardiness, longevity, rapidity of growth, sym- 
metry of form, adaptability,—all play their 
part, all may be called upon to act at the 
proper moment. Mr. Burbank has given deep 
thought to this branch of breeding, realizing 
the vast importance to the world in any suc- 
cessful plan for maintaining and increasing its 
tree life. Upon this point he says: 
“The possibilities of improvement in trees 
are so great as to make it seem almost an ex- 
aggeration to state them. Trees may be bred 
together within certain specific limits, to pro- 
duce other trees of different character at will, 
combining the characters of the parents or 
developing wholly new ones. In human life 
pre-natal influences are marvelously powerful 
and extraordinarily diverse, and the spiritual 
57 
