LUTHER BURBANK 
“But when, through a change of environment, 
that balance is disturbed, no man can predict the 
outcome. 
“So when a seed is planted, no man can be sure 
whether the twentieth century tendencies will 
predominate; or whether long-forgotten tendencies 
may suddenly spring into prominence and carry 
the plant back to a bygone age.” 
“How can seeds store up the tendencies of their 
ancestry?” some one asked Mr. Burbank. 
“How can your mind store up the impressions 
which it receives?” he asked in reply. 
Hidden away in the twists and turns of our own 
brains, needing but the right conditions to call 
them forth with vividness, there are hundreds of 
thousands, perhaps millions of impressions which 
have been registered there day by day. 
The first childhood’s scare on learning of the 
presence of burglars in the house may make us 
supersensitive to night noises in middle age. 
The indelible recollection of a mother’s love 
and tenderness may arise, after forty years, to 
choke down some harsh word which we are about 
to utter. 
The combined impressions of a thousand expe- 
riences with other human beings seem to blend 
[54] 
