powerful engines, but if the engines be too large there will not be
space enough for coal to feed the furnaces. If the breadth of the ship
is increased the speed is diminished, while on the other hand, if too
powerful engines are put in a narrow vessel she will break her back.
The proper proportions must be carefully studied as regards length,
breadth, depth and weight so that the vessel will derive the greatest
speed from her engines.




CHAPTER VII

WONDERFUL CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE

Mating Plants--Experiments of Burbank--What he has Accomplished.


In California lives a wonderful man. He has succeeded in doing more
than making two blades of grass grow where grew but one. Yearly, daily
in fact, this wizard of plant life is playing tricks on old Mother
Nature, transforming her vegetable children into different shapes and
making them no longer recognizable in their original forms. Like the
fairies in Irish mythology, this man steals away the plant babies, but
instead of leaving sickly elves in their places, he brings into the
world exceedingly healthy or lusty youngsters which grow up into a
full maturity, and develop traits of character superior to the ones
they supplant. For instance he took away the ugly, thorny insipid
cactus and replaced it by a beautiful smooth juicy one which is now
making the western deserts blossom as the rose. The name of this man