CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES 



lack of nourishing food and sunshine. Most 

 of them have opportunity for blossoming 

 out in luxurious beauty and abundance. A 

 few are so fixed in their habits that it is 

 better to select an individual for adoption 

 and improvement from a race which is more 

 pliable. This stability of character cannot 

 often be known except by careful trial, there- 

 fore members from several races at the same 

 time may be selected with advantage; the 

 most pliable and easily educated one will 

 soon make the fact manifest by showing a 

 tendency to 'break' or vary slightly or per- 

 haps profoundly from the wild state. Any 

 variation should be at once seized upon and 

 numerous seedlings raised from this individ- 

 ual. In the next generation one, or several, 

 even more marked variations will be almost 

 certain to appear; for, when a plant once 

 wakes up to the new influences brought to 

 bear upon it, the road is opened for endless 

 improvement in all directions, and the ope- 

 rator finds himself with a wealth of new forms 

 which is almost as discouraging to select 

 from as, in the first place, it was to induce 

 the plant to vary in the least, — now comes 



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