HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING 
customary Bartlett pears, the parent tree soon 
took on a greatly increased vigor. Sometimes 
the union of the graft and the tree will be 
complete, but, as he puts it, in the great stress 
of unusual drought or fruiting the grafted por- 
tion will separate again, later, and entirely fall 
off. Curious results are seen in some crosses, 
as, for example, some plum-almond crosses 
where there was every possible variation in the 
flowers,—some of them having all stamens 
and no pistils, some having many petals, some 
having no petals, some never opening like 
normal flowers at all, some having no stamens 
but only pistils. Sometimes a cross of a peach 
and an almond will produce a tree as large as 
ten peach trees or almond trees of the same 
age. Sometimes the precise opposite will be the 
case. Now and then the graft grows up thrift- 
ily and bears fruit, and its seeds are planted 
with the result that none will grow. Mr. 
Burbank says that a certain character, or char- 
acteristic, may lie latent through many gene- 
rations, or even centuries, and then appear just 
when the right cross is made to bring it out. 
But probably the most mysterious thing 
that has ever happened, in some ways at least, 
257 
