LUTHER BURBANK 
perhaps, without intervention at all, the same 
result might have been attained. 
From the fern at the water’s edge, to the apple 
tree which bears us luscious fruit—from the oyster 
that lies helpless in the bottom of Long Island 
Sound, to the human being who rakes it up, and 
eats it—every different form of life about us may, 
thus, be traced to the experiments which Nature 
is continually trying, in order to improve her 
creations. 
As to the question so often asked, monkeys are 
no more turning into men than golden-yellow 
poppies are turning into crimson, white or fire- 
flame poppies. 
In monkeys, as in men and poppies—and quartz 
crystals—there is ever present the tendency to 
break away from the kind, yet Nature is always 
alert to prevent the break—unless it demonstrates 
itself to be an advance, an improvement—from 
occurring. 
She gives us, all of us, and everything— 
individuality, personality—unfailingly, always—at 
the same time preserving in each the general 
characteristics of its kind. 
Yet all the time she is creating her freaks 
and “sports”’—all the time she is trying new 
experiments—most of them doomed to die unpro- 
ductive—with the hope that the thousand freaks 
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