LUTHER BURBANK 
structures, their tendencies, their habits, their indi- 
vidual peculiarities, we can read their histories 
back ages and ages before there were men and 
animals—read it, almost, as an open book; that 
our plants have lived their lives not by quiet 
rote and rule, but in a turmoil of emergency; 
and, just as they have always changed with their 
surroundings, so now, day by day, they continue 
to change to fit themselves to new environments; 
and that we, to bring forth new characteristics in 
them, to transform them to meet our ideals, have 
but to surround them with new environments—not 
at haphazard, but along the lines of our definite 
desires. ; 
—Is not the really 
wonderful thing 
the fact that the 
plants grow at all? 
