LUTHER BURBANK 
meat surrounding the seeds increased in quantity 
and improved in quality; so that in virtually half 
a century the large, luscious, juicy tomato we now 
know is universally to be found in our markets, 
in season and out. 
No man can say how many thousands or tens 
of thousands of years it took wild environment to 
separate the tomato from the seventy-four others 
of its family. Yet, in less than half a century, see 
what changes man, as an element of environment, 
has worked! 
We take the seeds of our Ponderosa tomatoes 
and set them out in a can or a shallow box, and 
midsummer brings us new Ponderosas—so well 
have we succeeded in fixing the traits we desire. 
But were we to take those same seeds to the 
tropics and plant them under the conditions of 
only fifty years ago an entirely different thing 
would happen. 
The first generation would be Ponderosas, more 
or less like those we grow here. 
But in the second generation, or, at latest, the 
third, the seeds of those very Ponderosas, when 
planted, would grow into vines which bear the 
old type of tomato—the size of a hickory nut—an 
immediate response, almost, to the wild tropical 
environment which prevailed before man came 
along. 
[234] 
