engineers use the forces of electricity and the elements of mechanics to create new mechanisms for the service of mankind.
For breeding experiments the tree has one great advantage over most of the annuals. We propagate trees by twig or bud, by grafting or budding. Therefore, any wild unstable (though useful) freak, any helpless malformation like the navel orange which cannot reproduce itself, can be made into a million trees by the nurseryman. With corn, oats, or alfalfa the breeder must produce a type true to seed before the farmer can use it.
Not only is the tree the great engine of production, but its present triumphant agricultural rivals, the grains, are really weaklings.
All plants require heat, light, moisture, and fertility. Give these things and the tree raises its head triumphantly and grows. But in addition to these requirements the weakling grains must have the plow. A given area may have rich soil and good climatic conditions, but be unsuitable for grain if the land happens to be rocky. Nor are steep lands good farm lands for grains. Trees are the natural crop plants for all such places,
Moreover the grains are annual plants. They must build
larger fruit than either parent. It is common for occasional plant hybrids to exceed either parent in speed of growth, size, earliness of fruiting.
Further experiments with cotton breeding show the dynamic and creative tendency of hybrids.
"Not only was there all manner of recombination of the characters of the parent types but many of these characters were expressed in an exagerated form. Moreover, numerous characters not observed in either parent appeared in the second generation, some of these having been decidedly abnormal. Many individuals were so strikingly different from either upland or Egyptian cotton that a botanist unaware of their hybrid origin would take them to represent new species."
"A remarkable character was the bluish white color of the practically alabrous foliage. There was no suggestion of this color in either parent and it does not occur in any cultivated cotton known to the writer."
(Extracts from "A Hybrid between Different Species of Cotton," by Thomas II. Kearney, U. S. Deparment of Agriculture, published in the Journal of Heredity. July, 1924.
