ON HEREDITY 
order to change and control the characteristics of 
any individual growing thing. 
“The first of these is environment. 
“The rains, the snows, the fogs, the droughts— 
the heat, the cold—the winds, the change in 
temperature between night and day—the soil, the 
location in shade or sun—competition for food, 
light, air—the neighbors, whether they be plant 
neighbors, or animal neighbors, or human neigh- 
bors—all of these, and a thousand other factors 
which could be thought of, are the elements of 
environment—some pulling the plant one way and 
some another, but each with its definite, though 
sometimes hardly noticeable, influence on the 
individual plant. 
“And the second is heredity: 
“Which is the sum of all of the environments 
of a complex ancestry—back to the beginning.” 
“Just as with the bear, if the story be true, so 
in plant life. In every seed that is produced there 
are stored away the tendencies of centuries and 
centuries of ancestry. The seed is but a bundle of 
tendencies. 
“When these tendencies have been nicely 
balanced by a long continuation of unchanging 
environment, the offspring is likely to resemble the 
parent. ; 
[53] 
