216 LUTHER BURBANK 



which, so far, have resulted in a better fruit, or 

 a better flower, or a more marketable nut, or a 

 more useful plant that is enough better in all 

 respects to warrant its introduction. 



On the other hand, I should feel repaid for all 

 the work I have done if only a dozen of these 

 experiments had turned out to be successes. It 

 is in the very nature of experimentation we 

 must try many things in order to accomplish a 

 few. 



And this is just what is going on in nature alt 

 the time excepting that where we might get 

 one success out of forty failures, there might be 

 but one out of a thousand or a million if the 

 plants were left to work out their own improve- 

 ment unaided. 



Then, after all, the unsuccessful experiments 

 are failures only in a comparative sense. 



If you have ever watched the bridge builders 

 constructing a concrete causeway, you must have 

 seen the false construction which was necessary 

 the stout wooden structure into which the 

 plastic material was poured a costly structure 

 in itself which was put up only to be torn down. 



We cannot call this wooden structure extrav- 

 agance or waste, because it was a necessary step 

 in the completion of the work. And so, while, 

 in nature, we find many individuals which are 



