NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



own generalizations and resting them on 

 the basis of his own knowledge. Within the 

 range of his own experience he is an original 

 and logical thinker, and his conclusions are 

 in general most sound. He is not a physiolo- 

 gist, still less a histologist, and the phenomena 

 of heredity as shown in cell - division and 

 cell -multiplication he has not studied for 

 himself. The researches of Weismann and 

 those suggested by his theories of heredity 

 Burbank has given little attention to, and 

 he has, therefore, a confidence in the inheri- 

 tance of acquired characters, such as effects 

 of environment, which most biologists of 

 today do not share. On the other hand, many 

 of the best of them would fully agree with 

 Burbank. 



" In his field of the application of our 

 knowledge of heredity, selection and crossing 

 to the development of plants, he stands 

 unique in the world. No one else, whatever 

 his appliances, has done as much as Burbank, 

 or disclosed as much of the laws governing 

 these phenomena. Burbank has worked for 

 years alone, not understood and not appre- 

 ciated, at a constant financial loss, and for this 



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