CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES 
terious enemy, or from some sudden and 
fatal plant illness; but not a clue had been 
left as to the author of the disaster. The 
plant could never be reproduced and the 
loss was a very heavy one. 
Many times, however, in the midst of 
the tests, the foes of the insect and animal 
world make open war upon the plants, and 
it would seem sometimes as if with malice 
aforethought. Some _ particularly valuable 
gladioli were surrounded by a row of ordi- 
nary gladioli in order to tempt the thieving 
gophers, should they appear, to satisfy them- 
selves with the coarser bulbs and thus pre- 
serve the choice ones. ‘The gophers, how- 
ever, were not to be put off in any such 
manner, but passed by the common bulbs 
and destroyed the rare ones, entailing a 
severe loss. Mr. Burbank showed me one day 
a large bed of seedling roses. In one end 
was a heavy growth of young plants, in 
the other a space several feet square in 
which there were not over a half dozen tiny 
little plants just peeping up through the 
soil. The plants which had been spared by 
the birds that had swooped down upon the 
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