ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
or appearance, or some probable quality which 
it contains within. In this simple selection of 
individuals we may have saved other thousands 
of years. 
With unerring accuracy we have seen that the 
pollen of the two kinds has been interchanged, so 
that the five hundred or so resulting seeds will 
represent the two heredities we wish to mix—and 
only these. 
Who can estimate how long it might have 
taken the bees and the winds, working even in 
neighboring trees, to effect specific crosses with 
the certainty which we have assured? 
Now, with new heredities bundled up in our 
five hundred cherry stones, we plant them under 
every favoring condition in our shallow box, and 
unless mishap or accident intervenes, we get new 
cherry trees from all, or, at worst, lose but a few. 
From five hundred other cherries on a tree, 
leaving the birds to distribute the seed, how many 
seedlings will there sprout? 
And now, with our sprouted cherry seedlings 
six inches or eight in height, with no man knows 
how many thousand years of nature’s processes 
cut out, we come to the most important short-cut 
of all—quick fruiting, so that there may be quick 
selection. 
[197] 
