NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
duction of better varieties which slowly but 
surely supplant the old ones. He makes note 
of the fact, too, that the seed-ball of the 
potato is less and less often found now upon 
the common varieties, due to the fact that the 
tuber of the potato itself is used in planting 
exclusively. The continued disuse of any 
organ in a plant, as in an animal, tends to its 
weakening and final extinction. He notes 
among plants which have gradually passed 
through the same experience the sugar-cane, 
banana, horse-radish, sweet potato and others. 
Thousands of new potatoes are being bred 
by Mr. Burbank in the midst of his new tests 
in the search for better stock. Very much of 
this is begun in the hothouse, in order to save 
time. Selection here goes on upon an elaborate 
scale, but, important as it always is in this 
production of plants specifically valuable com- 
mercially as well as those for adornment alone, 
selection is not less important, in a commer- 
cial production, than a knowledge of the needs 
of the various parts of the world to which the 
new production is to go. Here lie some of the 
most important problems in all Mr. Burbank’s 
work, the solution calling for the widest pos- 
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