of plants and another striking example is that of a single plant 
discovered near Alquiza, Cuba, in a held of Havana or Cuban to- 
bacco, a variety normally possessing only 18 to 24 commercial 
leaves, but the fasciated specimen had over one hundred and hfty. 
On the Pacific coast, spraying orchards with insect poisons is a 
general and efficient practice, but recently, a scientist has made 
certain observations which seem to show that the present kinds of 
spray remedies may not always prove efficient, as constant spray- 
ing has served as a selective agent whereby certain insect indiv- 
iduals naturally immune to the spray, have been isolated and en- 
abled to increase more rapidly because of the destruction of their 
non-immune brethren, just as contagious diseases among the 
Chinese from time to time have killed off those which lack natural 
immunity until now, as a race, they are practically immune to a 
large number of the diseases which are fatal to Europeans. 
So great a place in the living world has this thing called var- 
iability that, with all theirvery best efforts put forward, our breed- 
ers, agriculturists and seedsmen have hard work to keep it within 
legitimate bounds. Vegetables and flowering plants must be care- 
fully watched on the big seed farms to keep down the rogues or 
worthless variations. Stock breeders must be ever on the alert 
to keep their breeding animals up to the standard breed type. 
Grain growers, potato farmers and florists suffer from the so- 
called “running out” of once valuable varieties. Varieties of 
fruit and vegetables valuable in one locality prove worthless in 
another, and vice versa. That is why our forefathers here in 
America had to start all over again instead of using the varieties 
they brought from their old home. That also is the reason why the 
national Department of Agriculture has explorers and correspon- 
dents in all parts of the world on lhe lookout for new varieties of 
vegetables, flowers, and fruits which it tests in this country, 
though the majority of them prove worthless. Varieties of plants 
and animals are very likely to develop new traits and new char- 
acters when exposed to new sets of conditions. The tall trees of 
one climate may be the dwarfs of another. The obscure and little 
known insects and wild plants of one country may be the scourges 
of another, as for example the Chinese San Jose scale in America, 
the American cactus in Australia, the Russian thistle in western 
America. Cultivated forms of the weeds of the tropics often be- 
come the garden and hothouse plants of the temperate zones. 
But on the other hand, after all has been said concerning var- 
iability, it is still a fact that certain living organisms are so strik- 
ingly similar as regards certain characters, that we are able to class- 
ify them roughly into varieties, species, genera and families. At 
the same time this grouping is in many respects artificial and 
must always remain more or less so— serving largely as a conven- 
ient method of keeping track of them — of pigeon-holing them, so 
to speak, so that we may talk about them. A striking illustration 
of the stability of certain characters is that exhibited by plants 
propagated by bulbs such as tulips and hyacinths. We are told 
