20 LUTHER BURBANK 



cane or horse-radish, to say nothing of roses, 

 ornamental shrubs, and a great number of flow- 

 ering plants, from seed. 



They are propagated by grafting or budding, 

 or by rooting the stem or dividing the roots or 

 planting the tuber. And the reason in each case 

 is the same. The perfected variety originated 

 from a single individual that combined a large 

 number of desirable qualities, and the entire com- 

 pany of individual representatives of that variety, 

 though they be numbered in millions, are not 

 really descendants, but offshoots, a part of the 

 original individual. 



Each cion or bud from a given tree will pro- 

 duce fruit precisely like that from the tree from 

 which it is taken, because it is itself a part of the 

 tree. And however widely new cions and buds 

 from the first tree may be disseminated, they 

 carry the same traits, because, rightly considered, 

 they are a part of the same individual organism. 

 The Seckel pear tree that grows in your dooryard 

 is, from the standpoint of heredity, a tree of the 

 same generation with untold thousands of other 

 Seckel pear trees that have grown here and there 

 across the hemispheres for more than a hundred 

 years or since the first one appeared in fche 

 orchard of the Pennsylvanian whose name they 

 bear. 



