No. 5. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. ' 395 



Each of the factors mentioned are of primary importance to the 

 complete development of every individual. They are interdependent, 

 and the highest degree of perfection is seldom reached unless they 

 work in harmony. 



In the past most of our efforts have been directed to the improve- 

 ment of plants and animals by changing and improving their environ- 

 ment, and the work has not been done without a considerable degree of 

 success. However, improvements which arise because of superior en- 

 vironment are of short duration, and are usually accompanied by 

 considerable expense, while improvements due to heredity, though pos- 

 sibly expensive, are usually more or less permanent. Thus we may 

 increase tlie yield of our corn or wheat crop several bushels per acre 

 by the application of a fertilizer rich in available plant food but the 

 result will be for the year only, while if the increased yield be due 

 to a superior strain of seed which produces a larger crop because of 

 heredity, the high yielding character will be transmitted from one 

 crop to another through succeeding years. 



It is probable that more systematic attention has been devoted to 

 the improvement of plants since the year nineteen hundred than was 

 done in all the previous history of the world. Doubtless the greatest 

 impetus to the work was the rediscovery of Mendel's law of which we 

 shall speak in more detail later. Much interest has been aroused in 

 the subject of plant breeding through the work of Luther Burbank, 

 until at the present time his name is a common household word. The 

 work of Burbank has served to bring the subject before the general 

 public. Unfortunately, however, due to the efforts of over zealous 

 journalists, many persons have been led to consider his work as magic, 

 or else that he was running opposition to the Creator, and that his 

 "creations" were of economic importance to an extent scarcely within 

 the bounds of the most fertile imagination. As a matter of fact it is 

 nothing of the kind. Practically all of the results obtained by Bur- 

 bank or others, when carefully scrutinized, are relatively simply and 

 conform quite closely to well known principles. Much of the success 

 of Burbank is due to the fact that he works with immense numbers. 

 It is possible that some of you have heard of some of the beautiful 

 varieties of lilies he has developed, but doubtless you have not heard 

 that of half a million plants only fifty were retained for further pro- 

 pagntion. the others being destroyed. Likewise many of the positive 

 results in plant breeding, about which the public hears so much, have 

 been obtained only after an immense amount of painstaking v/ork 

 about which the public hears nothing. The practice of reporting only 

 one side of the story has led many persons to become interested in 

 plant breeding, later to give up in disgust, when they found that their 

 efforts were not crowned with immediate success. 



Variation is an inherent fact of all organisms. No two individuals 

 are exactly alike. Thus the passerby looking at a field of wheat may 

 say that the plants are all alike, but the careful observer will find 

 that while in most instances there is a general resemblance between 

 the plants, yet no two are exactly alike, and at infrequent intervals a 

 plant may be found Avhich is distinctly different from any of its 

 neighbors. We thus have two kinds of variation, continuous, that in 

 which they occur but rarely such as would be illustrated by the dis- 



