LUTHER BURBANK 
Or what triviality, out of the ordinary, will lead 
to the discovery of a new truth? 
The potato seed ball was a little thing, an 
accident almost, a triviality, at least, so any prac- 
tical farmer would have said. 
Away back in the history of the potato, when 
it had to depend upon its seed for reproduction, 
every healthy potato plant bore one or more. 
But years of cultivation have removed from 
the potato the necessity of bearing seeds for 
the preservation of its race. The potato plant, so 
certain, now, to reproduce itself through subdi- 
vision of its bulb or tuber—so reliant on man for 
its propagation—has little use for the seed upon 
which its ancestors depended for perpetuation 
before men relieved it of this burden. 
So the average potato grower, knowing that 
next year’s crop depends only on this year’s 
tubers-—and being more anxious, alas, to keep his 
crop at a fixed standard than to improve it—might 
see the occasional seed ball without knowing its 
meaning—or realizing its possibilities. 
Luther Burbank saw the seed ball in his 
mother’s potato patch. If he did not realize its 
possibilities, at least he scented an adventure. 
And who can say in advance where adventure 
—any adventure—will lead? 
[58] 
