ON FACT VS. THEORY 
combinations between the classes? Or to go above 
the classes and make combinations between the 
subkingdoms? 
“Give us time,” says Mr. Burbank, “and we 
could accomplish anything. 
“The limitations of our work are not limitations 
imposed by Nature; they are limitations imposed, 
alone, by the clock and the calendar. 
“Here we are, fighting ten thousand years of 
hardened heredity with five or ten years of new 
environment; sometimes we succeed; it is no 
wonder that more often we fail; in five years, 
however, we can usually work a transformation; 
if we could afford to spend fifty years on a single 
plant, we could upset every rule that has ever been 
formulated about that plant; and if we could 
spend five thousand years, we could, simply by 
guiding Nature, accomplish, well, anything. 
“Every season we are working changes which 
Nature would take ages to work; but from a 
practical standpoint we must seek always to take 
advantage of the old heredities which Nature has 
stored up—to make them serve our ends, because 
this can be done quickly; rather than to create and 
fix new heredities which might take so long as to 
rob our work of its usefulness.” 
Here, then, is Mr. Burbank’s bird’s-eye view: 
[237] 
