18 LUTHER BURBANK 



and departing utterly from that particular parent 

 in point of size. 



But, although an individual was at last found 

 that did combine all the desired qualities, the very 

 fact that this individual had been built up by 

 putting together this quality brought from one 

 parent and that quality from another, with the 

 rejection of antagonistic qualities in each case, 

 makes it inevitable that the perfected Shasta 

 should contain latent in its system a whole coterie 

 of tendencies which are striving for recognition, 

 and which will make themselves felt in subsequent 

 generations. 



Hence it is that when seeds are gathered from 

 the perfected Shasta they will not give us a crop 

 of flowers like their parent. On the contrary, 

 they will show the utmost diversity of form and 

 size, making tangible thus the persistent force of 

 the hereditary tendencies that had been trans- 

 mitted from diverse ancestors, but which were 

 submerged or made latent, simply because they 

 were momentarily subordinated to opposing 

 qualities, in the case of the perfect Shasta. 



The Shasta daisy, then, while individually 

 almost a perfect embodiment of the ideal at which 

 I aimed, is when reproduced from seed anything 

 but a fixed type. Had it not been possible to 

 propagate the plant by division and then by an 



