LUTHER BURBANK 
and two thousand years for the Orientals to 
produce the pear they liked. 
Yet, as plant improvement goes, the pear 
was quick to respond to its environment; other 
fruit improvements wrought through unconscious 
selection have taken ten times as long. 
On the other hand we see Luther Burbank’s 
cherry tree, bearing more than five hundred dif- 
ferent kinds of cherries at the same time, cherries 
produced to compare with a mental blue print 
less than three years old—cherries, from among 
which, one, at least, will be found, which will 
lead the way to the achievement of the ideal. 
And, similarly, in every department of plant 
life, whether it be in farm plants, or garden 
plants, or forest plants, or lawn plants, or orchard 
plants, or whether it be in plants which we grow 
for their chemical content, or for their fibers, or 
what—we shall find that it is possible to devise 
short-cuts into the centuries to come, and through 
combining stored up heredity with new environ- 
ment, to hurry evolution to produce for us entirely 
new plants to meet our specific desires. 
—Who shall say that progress, any 
progress, is not worth all it costs? 
