LUTHER BURBANK'S }YORK 365 



only one of the crossed forms. Some crosses are made in the attempt 

 to extinguish an undesirable characteristic. 



Third, there is always immediately following the unusual produc- 

 tion of variations, the recognition of desirable modifications and the 

 intelligent and effective selection of them, i. e., the saving of those 

 plants to produce seed or cuttings which show the desirable variations 

 and the discarding of all the others. In Burbank's gardens the few 

 tenderly cared for little potted plants or carefully grafted seedlings 

 represent the surviving fittest, and the great bonfires of scores of thou- 

 sands of uprooted others, the unfit, in this close mimicry of Darwin and 

 Spencer's struggle and survival in nature. 



It is precisely in this double process of the recognition and selection 

 of desirable variations that Burbank's genius comes into particular 

 play. Bight here he brings something to bear on his work that few 

 other men have been able to do. It is the extraordinary keenness of 

 perception, the delicacy of recognition of desirable variations in their 

 (usually) small and to most men imperceptible beginnings. Is it 

 a fragrance that is sought? To Burbank in a bed of hundreds of 

 seedling walnuts scores of the odors of the plant kingdom are arising 

 and mingling from the fresh green leaves, but each, mind you, from 

 a certain single seedling or perhaps from a similar pair or trio. But 

 to me or to you, until the master prover points out two or three of 

 the more dominant single odors, the impression on the olfactories is 

 simply (or confusedly) that of one soft elusive fragrance of fresh green 

 leaves. Similarly Burbank is a master at seeing, and a master at 

 feeling. And besides he has his own unique knowledge of correlations. 

 Does this plum seedling with its score of leaves on its thin stem have 

 those leaves infinitesimally plumper, smoother or stronger, or with 

 more even margins and stronger petiole or what not else, than any 

 other among a thousand similar childish trees? Then it is saved, for 

 it will bear a larger, or a sweeter, or a firmer sort of plum, or more 

 plums than the others. So to the bonfires with the others and to the 

 company of the elect with this ' fittest ' one. Now this recognition, 

 this knowledge of correlations in plant structure, born of the exercise 

 of a genius for perceiving through thirty years of opportunity for 

 testing and perfecting it, is perhaps the most important single thing 

 which Burbank brings to his work that other men do not (at least 

 in such unusual degree of reliability). Enormous industry, utter con- 

 centration and single-mindedness, deftness in manipulation, fertility in 

 practical resource, has Burbank — and so have numerous other breeders 

 and experimenters. But in his perception of variability in its form- 

 ing, his recognition of its possibilities of outcome, and in his scien- 

 tific knowledge of correlations, a knowledge that is real, for it is one 

 that is relied on and built on, and is at the very foundation of his 



