LUTHER BURBANK 
gence, has devoted himself to a single phase, at 
least, of a complex subject. 
But we must remember that the theories, most 
of them, are built around dead plants. 
While the facts we are to use are to be gathered 
from living ones. 
So, every once in a while, when we come to a 
crossroads where that kind of theory and this kind 
of fact seem to part, let us stick to the thing which 
the living plant tells us, and assume that evolution, 
or improvement, or progress, or whatever we 
choose to call it, has stolen another lap on the 
plant historians. 
And let us remember that the fact that ours is 
not an exact science, with fixed answers to its 
problems, is more than made up for by the 
compensating fact that there seems to be no limit 
to the perfection to which plant achievements may 
be carried—no impassable barrier, apparently 
(save time—which limits us all, in everything), 
beyond which our experiments may not go. 
S 
—Nature did not make 
the laws; she limits her- 
£ 
self to no grooves; she 
travels to no set schedule. 
