ON ENVIRONMENT 
But may it not be because, for generations, we 
have fostered them, and nurtured them, and cared 
for them? 
May it not be because we have made it easy for 
them to live and to thrive? 
May it not be because we have relieved them 
of the responsibility of defense and reproduction, 
that they have rewarded our kindly care by 
fruiting and blooming, not for their own selfish 
ends, but for us? 
No man was ever kind to a cactus; no man ever 
cultivated the sagebrush; no man ever cherished 
the poisonous euphorbia. 
Is it, then, to be wondered at that the primal 
instinct of self preservation has prevailed—that 
what might have been a food plant equal to the 
plum transformed itself into a wild porcupine 
among plants? 
That what might have been as useful to the 
horse as hay changed its nature and became bitter, 
woody, inedible? 
That what might have been a welcome friend 
to the weary desert traveler grew up, instead, into 
a poisonous enemy? 
“If the bitterness, the poison and the spines 
are means of self defense,” thought Mr. Burbank, 
“then they must be means which have been 
[11] 
