LUTHER BURBANK 
merely of the fruit but of the tree on which it 
grows. 
For within the infinitesimal structure of the 
nucleus, by the most mystifying of all Nature’s 
feats of jugglery, are lodged those hereditary fac- 
tors or determiners that will ultimately transmit 
the traits of the ancestral tree to the tree of the 
future. 
In the widest sense it is true that the sole pur- 
pose of the entire plant is to produce a certain 
number of these germinal nuclei, each represent- 
ing the union of a pollen grain with an ovule; each 
carefully encased in the structure that we call a 
seed; and each capable of reproducing, with sun- 
dry modifications, the characteristics of the parent 
plant, or, in a profounder view, the blended char- 
acteristics of the entire ancestral race which the 
plant represents. 
When we consider the seed in this way it does 
not seem strange that all the resources of Nature 
should concentrate on the development of the 
fruit structure in which the all-important seed or 
cluster of seeds finds lodgment. And by the same 
token it is comprehensible that Nature will hold 
to the seed with the most unwavering persistency. 
And so it is not strange that the plant experi- 
menter should be able to alter the size and texture 
and quality of the fruit pulp far more readily than 
[30] 
