BREEDING FOR PERFUME 
easy avenue to a land of blue roses. A lesser 
man would have hastened forward on the 
road that lead to this strange floral wonder; 
but, despite the novelty and the fascination 
that always surround the development of a 
new creation, he would not enter in upon it 
when so many greater and more valuable 
things for the advancement of the world lay 
before him. 
So everything that he does must have, 
if possible, a definite practical end in view, 
—it must help the world along. 
So in the breeding of flowers for perfume, 
the paramount thing, from the practical 
point of view, is to breed the perfume so 
that it will have a direct, commercial bear- 
ing. Mr. Burbank has demonstrated the com- 
plete pliability of flowers not only in the 
way of color and _ structure but in the 
way of odor. It now becomes practicable to 
take a strain of roses, for example, which 
are prolific and hardy but with little or no 
odor, and breed into them the most power- 
ful of perfumes. It now becomes possible 
to take a flower having a perfume not par- 
ticularly agreeable,— indeed, one positively 
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