S? MIRACLES IN THE GARDEN 121 



ant's vaunted intelligence. To me the seed of a 

 plant seems more marvelous in its way. Sup- 

 pose you buy a mixed package of poppy seeds. 

 Most of them are indistinguishable to the eye 

 and much smaller than a pin's head; yet each 

 of them grows infallibly into the same poppy it 

 descended from, be it Iceland or Oriental or 

 Darwin or Shirley or California, or what not. 

 Not only that, but any changes or improvements 

 made by plant breeders are promptly imbedded 

 in the mysterious substance of the tiny seed. 



Nothing I have ever said to or written about 

 Luther Burbank in admiration of his achieve- 

 ments pleased him more than my noting at 

 once that the Sunset Shirleys in his Santa Rosa 

 garden were perceptibly more golden than the 

 preceding summer's, and that I looked forward 

 to enjoying the new shade in my Maine garden 

 the following year. 



In Burbank's garden, certainly, miracles are 

 of daily occurrence. When he first began in 

 California to "do stunts" with the plants, 

 making them disregard the established order of 

 things, a minister invited him to his church and 

 then fiercely denounced him in his sermon as 

 one who interfered with the laws of nature, as 

 God alone had the right to do. But Burbank 

 knew there was nothing impious in his new 

 creations; that he was simply accelerating 

 nature's processes of natural selection and 

 improvement, doing in a decade what nature 



