NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
this stock as a basis; finally you have the 
perfected tree just as you wish it. Once pro- 
duced, it is, save in minor essentials, unchang- 
ing. You can change the grain of the tree, 
or its bark, or its top, or its trunk, or its 
leaves, or its roots, or its quantity of quinine, 
or sugar, or pitch, or what not;—you can 
hardly think of anything you cannot do with 
it. You can make it grow tall or short, huge 
of girth or slender, narrow of branch or broad, 
you can change the number of leaves it will 
bear upon a branch and their shape. You can 
chemically transform it, too. Of course, the 
habits of the tree must first be firmly enough 
fixed through sufficient generations so that it 
will not revert—then it will go onward in its 
new course; or, by grafting, at once. 
“There are certain things which do not 
seem possible, certain crosses of trees of widely 
separated species that seem out of the ques- 
tion. Still, while these crosses may never 
become what might be termed commercially 
effective, not practical, in other words, yet 
they may be what may be called scientifically 
successful. In other words, the actual act of 
crossing may be accomplished where it has 
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