NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



comrade had the same chance, but one of 

 them was a hustler and the other was not. 



"The fact is too often lost sight of, or not 

 known at all, that the tops of the trees abso- 

 lutely govern the roots. The leaves are the 

 lungs and the stomach of the tree. The food 

 is digested, so to speak, in the leaves and 

 there made accessible for the tree as a whole. 

 If a tree be fine of foliage it will be powerful 

 in all its parts, because it has the capacity to 

 take so much nourishment from the air, — 

 four- fifths of it being nitrogen, which is the 

 chief source of supply for plant -food. The 

 sun, too, plays its important part, — condensed 

 sunshine and condensed air are the chief 

 articles of the tree's diet. 



"Each tree, too, has its own individual 

 characteristics and traits, as well as being 

 absolutely unlike all other trees in form and 

 structure, and these traits must be studied and 

 taken carefully into consideration. Take the 

 one act of fruit -bearing. I find that in certain 

 instances I have bred trees to bear too much 

 fruit, the matter was overdone. It came about 

 by constantly selecting from seedling trees 

 which were heavy fruit-bearers, all the time 



62 



