NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
ably not one out of a thousand seeds produced 
a flower with any fragrance. It is far easier 
for a flower to rebel and throw off a new per- 
fume than it is for it to discard some other 
characteristic which it has been led to adopt.” 
Now that the solution of the problem has 
been reached, it is only the question of the 
necessary time for the conversion of the entire 
dahlia family to fragrance. 
To change an ill odor into a delightful one 
is one of the most remarkable of Mr. Bur- 
bank’s achievements in breeding for perfume, 
but to give a flower fragrance where none 
before existed, this is a still more difficult task. 
For years he has been at work perfecting a 
heretofore scentless verbena, increasing it in 
size and beauty of blossoms and giving it a 
more commanding place among the flowers of 
the world. In the evening of a summer day, 
while he was walking in the plots set apart for 
the testing of the verbenas, a faint odor came 
up to him on the soft night air. It was so 
curious a thing, coming from a bed of flowers 
before bearing no fragrance, that he instantly 
began a search in the bed for the plant whose 
blossom had shown this strange scent, 
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