NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
the point where the skill of the operator is 
put to the severest test. When a wild plant 
has been induced to change its old habits, 
fixed by ages of uniform environment, it 
needs some one with a steady hand to 
guide it into a condition of refinement and 
beauty sufficient to adorn any occasion.” 
One of the rarest flowers Mr. Burbank 
has ever produced met a tragic fate. It 
was a most beautiful and delicately tinted 
flower upon a vine of exquisite greenness, 
a vine which would be suited admirably for 
interior decoration or for use in masses 
upon lawns. It was a hybrid mesembryan- 
themum, a plant whose habit is to open its 
beautiful flowers in the sunshine but to close 
them when the dark weather comes on. The 
hybrid, while like its ancestors in some general 
characters, was still unique among flowers, 
and Mr. Burbank set great store by it. One 
morning a workman in the part of the 
grounds where the flower was growing dis- 
covered that every plant, wherever it was 
located —some being in one part of the 
grounds, some in another—had met simul- 
taneous death at the hands of some mys- 
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