You have learned that in story telling you should include no detail that is not necessary to the clearness or interest of your story, and that in description you should include nothing that does not help to give the impression you want your word picture to leave. The following is a simple way of saying all this:

Good composition should possess oneness or unity.

This quality is even more important in explanation and argument than in narration and description. We do not succeed in teaching or convincing people if we constantly take their attention from the points we are trying to make, by introducing unimportant details or entirely unconnected matter. Each sentence and each paragraph should have a definite purpose.

Exercise 196. An Explanation

Read the following explanation first for the interest of the subject matter. Then read it again and make an outline, giving a number and a topic to each paragraph. See if any paragraph or part of a paragraph should be omitted for the sake of unity.

Raising New Varieties Of Peonies From Seed

To a lover of flowers one of the most fascinating kinds of work in the world is the production of new and beautiful varieties of peonies from seed. But, interesting as the task is, no one should undertake it who has not patience to wait through a series of years for results that, though sure to be interesting, are still uncertain.

It must not be thought that the problem is merely to get a new variety of flower. That would be a simple matter. In fact, if the seeds of a single plant were sowed, probably no one of the resulting plants would be exactly like either the original plant or any one of the other seedlings; each would be a new variety. But very likely each would have undesirable qualities or be inferior to some similar variety already under cultivation. What the experimenter does wish to secure is a different combination of desirable qualities from any that has yet been produced. A first-class variety must combine in the flower good coloring, and attractive form. Fragrance, and substance, or good keeping qualities, are also very desirable. Such a variety must combine in the plant vigor, good clean foliage, and strong stems; and it should bloom well every year.

Since we are likely to get the best results from well-bred seed, we prepare in advance for a promising crop. We do this by planting many of the best European and American varieties close together, so that during the blooming season winds and bees can easily carry pollen from the stamens of one flower to the pistils of another. Many of the resulting seeds will thus be the product of cross-fertilization. With such parentage we ought to get something good.

The dark brown seeds, which are of the size and shape of a medium sized pea, are gathered just as the pealike pods are opening; and sometime before freezing weather they are sowed. The planting is generally done in beds, the seed being sowed broadcast and covered to the depth of an inch.

As the ground freezes, the seed bed is covered with an inch mulch of some coarse litter. In the spring the mulch is removed, and the ground is kept free from weeds throughout the summer. With the freeze up in the fall, the bed is covered as before, and the mulch is left until open weather in the spring. With the first warm days of the second spring, the little peonies begin to pierce the soil. During this first season of growth they send forth but a single leaf stalk, and this grows only two inches. A straight root about four inches long and of the diameter of a lead pencil is produced.

In the latter part of August these little roots are lifted and transplanted to the trial bed, where they are to show what kind of flowers they can produce. Here they lie dormant until spring. Daring the second summer thorough horse cultivation is given throughout the growing season, and the plants grow to a height of about six inches, the tops dying down in the fall. The next spring the seedlings burst forth strong and robust, carrying three stalks, on an average. A few plants blossom, this, the fourth year from the planting of the seed.

The next or fifth year is the time we have anxiously waited for since we planted the bed that was to furnish seeds for the experiment; for this year most of the plants bloom. A large bed of seedling peonies is a sight never to be forgotten. It is nature's planting for distant effect. The cultivation has been intense, and the plants are luxuriant in growth. They form a solid mass; and as the blooms open, they touch on every side all over the patch. Before you lies an immense carpet of harmonious colors, - white, cream, and all shades from the most delicate blush through pink, rose, and crimson, to the deepest maroon. Here are ten thousand plants and forty thousand blooms, but nowhere in the patch can you find any two flowers exactly alike. And among them, we say with the never-failing hope of the experimenter, is surely one different from any that the world has ever produced and as good as the best.

Now comes the task of selecting for preservation the varieties that give promise of being really choice. Of all the plants raised about ninety per cent revert to the original type of the peony and turn out singles. Beautiful as these are both in mass and individually, very few are chosen, since it is doubles we are looking for. As fast as the seedlings bloom the choice ones are selected from the doubles. During the blooming season, the seed bed is gone through several times each day. Promising varieties are noted, and all that seem of outstanding merit are so marked. This process of selection is continued for years, since each season some new plants bloom or some choice ones that have been overlooked attract attention. One of our best seedlings, one of the very best early reds of which we have knowledge, bloomed the fourth year. It was the first of all our seedlings, single or double, to bloom. The most wonderful seedling we have produced stood seven years in the seed and trial beds before it bloomed. Our first prize seedling at the peony show in June, 1914, stood fourteen years before we finally selected it as being of merit.

A Small Part of a Peony Field. A. J. Swanson.

But there is a final test. We must determine in each case whether the qualities that have attracted our attention are permanent, - whether "the type is fixed." The plants that have been marked in the seed bed are lifted at the planting season, and the roots are divided. These divisions, which, if they prove worthy, are to form the original stock of new varieties, are planted in rows four feet apart and three feet apart in the row. Each group is staked, numbered, and marked as to its quality at the time of selection. Intense cultivation is given the plants for three years, and a record of the performance of each variety is kept for each of these years. Only those varieties which come good two out of the three years are finally selected as worthy of perpetuation, and given names in place of the numbers by which they have heretofore been known. The final sifting may result in about twenty out of ten thousand varieties.

But even if the work, from beginning to end, had not been full of pleasant excitement, and if only our one best variety had survived the tests, we should have been repaid for our experiment. To have produced a pink which is to other pinks what Festiva Maxima is to other whites is reward enough for the years of working and waiting.1

A. M. Brand.

Topics For Oral And Written Composition

Give special attention to the clear use of pronouns, and to the unity of each sentence and paragraph as well as the entire composition.

1. The origin of some valuable plant; for example, the Concord grape, the Baldwin or Wealthy apple, the Burbank or some later potato, some variety of corn or wheat.

2. The life and work of Luther Burbank.

3. A variety of wheat (apple, corn, potato, orange, flower) that is adapted to your locality.

4. The improvement of some variety of grain by seed selection.

1 Adapted from article in the Minnesota Horticulturist.

5. Airships. The chief classes and their main points of difference.

6. A particular airship.

7. The uses of airships.

8. The forage crops of our district.

9. A worth-while moving picture show.

10. A favorite picture. When you saw it, why you liked it, the artist, any interesting facts in its history.

11. The story of the invention of some machine.

12. How two boys established telephone (wireless telegraphy) communication between their houses.

13. The value of some vegetable as an article of diet and some ways to prepare it.

14. Ways in which a certain sport may be a help to your school.

15. Ways in which it may be an injury.

16. Advantages of departmental work in grammar grades.

17. Advantages of a consolidated rural school.