186 LUTHER BURBANK 



the sun throughout enough generations it would, 

 no doubt, bear us flowers of brilliant orange. 



Here, then, are two divergent strains of hered- 

 ity in two somewhat closely related species 

 one orange, one white one sturdy, one fragile 

 each strain so thoroughly fixed that in a lifetime 

 it would probably be impossible, through en- 

 vironment alone, to overthrow it. 



Let us next take a twenty-foot flower bed; di- 

 vide it in the middle, plant one side solid with 

 the orange daisies, and the other side solid with 

 white daisies, and let the bees and the breezes 

 combine those heredities to produce a perturba- 

 tion, through which we hope to secure some new 

 colors. 



The breezes and the bees carry the pollen from 

 flower to flower; the rays fall away, and dis- 

 close the fertile seed in which, for the first time, 

 these two strains of heredities are combined. 



From the millions of seeds which we obtain 

 from these composite flowers there are some with 

 the white tendencies stored away unaltered, some 

 with the orange tendencies still predominant- 

 some with white pulling evenly against orange, 

 some with orange slightly stronger than white, 

 and all with an infinity of variation between. 



We shall find in some seeds a combination 

 of tendencies, not only of the two species, 



