ON ADAPTATION 
Our alfalfa, lettuce and apples, like our horses, 
our cows, our dogs, have found in man a friend 
stronger than the strongest of their enemies. 
So their welfare now is measured by the 
usefulness of the service they can render in repay- 
ment for man’s care. 
“There is a common snowball in my yard,” 
continued Mr. Burbank, “which advertises alone 
to me. 
“In the woods around there are other snowballs 
of the same family—wild snowballs—into whose 
life history man, as a part of environment, has 
never come. 
“The wild snowbail, with only a fringe of 
blossoms, and a mass of egg nests and pollen inside 
the fringe, is still advertising to the bee. 
“But the snowball in my yard has responded 
to my care, and to the care of those who went 
before me, till its stamens and pistils, as if seeing 
their needlessness, have turned to blossoms—till 
its eggs have grown sterile, even should an insect 
come. 
“And so, with every snowball which grows in 
anybody’s yard—cultivation has relieved it of the 
need for reproduction, and what was once but a 
fringe of flowers has been transformed into a 
solid mass of blossoms. 
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