BREEDING FOR PERFUME 
“To keep track of the details of a plant’s 
life under change from an old order of things,” 
says Mr. Burbank, “and to bear in mind all 
that must be remembered and considered as 
to its life history,—beside this, the classifica- 
tion of the botanists is child’s play.” 
When the flower which has been changed 
in form or color has been watched through a 
series of years and shows no sign of return to 
its old ways, then it may be left to itself 
to follow out the new order of its changed life. 
It certainly took a long while to make the 
dahlia double, for example, but this is now a 
fixed characteristic and there is no reversion 
to the old order. 
It so happened one day, several years ago, 
that Mr. Burbank, while in the dahlia proving- 
plots, suddenly noticed one flower which bore 
none of the disagreeable odor characteristic of 
this plant, but, in its place, a faint fragrance, 
elusive, but undeniably sweet. Instantly the 
flower was isolated, and with the most jealous 
care its seeds were saved and planted. 
A problem of immense difficulty was before 
him, for of all the qualities of a plant the most 
elusive, the least understandable, the most 
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