168 LUTHER BURBANK 



purpose, or fitted to carry a separate burden, or 

 designed to fill a separate want. 



If the violets had been as like as pins, they 

 would have stayed as like as pins when planted 

 in that friendly dooryard. 



But because each had within it the power of 

 transmitting variation, the power of responding, 

 ever so little, to the trend of its surroundings, 

 one violet became a pansy. 



Among our human acquaintances we know 

 those who are sturdy, and those who are weak; 

 those who have well-developed minds at the 

 expense of their muscles, and those who have 

 well-developed muscles at the expense of their 

 minds, and those with a more evenly balanced 

 development; we know some who are tall and 

 some who are short; some with brown eyes and 

 some with blue; some who lean toward com- 

 merce, and some who lean toward art; and on 

 and on, throughout an infinite number of vari- 

 ations, an infinite combination of these vari- 

 ations, each variation representing the result of 

 present environment reacting upon all the envi- 

 ronments of the ages, stored away. 



As a people, we traveled by stage till the 

 railroad came; and then in a single generation, 

 because of the variation and the adaptability 

 among us, we found surveyors to push their 



