68 LUTHER BURBANK 



This and similar experiments illustrate the 

 possibility of selecting out and fixing new races 

 varying widely as to a single important quality 

 of grain among the descendants of a parent plant 

 of relatively fixed strain. In fact no plant is so 

 fixed that its individual members do not show 

 variation; none so fixed that it does not supply 

 material with which the experimenter may work 

 in producing new varieties. 



Another illustration of the same thing was 

 given by an allied series of experiments at the 

 Illinois Station at which selection was made with 

 reference to the height of the ear on the corn 

 stalk. Seed from the same cob was planted in 

 two fields and grown always under closely simi- 

 lar conditions. 



But in one field selection was made for breed- 

 ing purposes from stalks having the ears higher 

 from the ground than the average; and in the 

 other field from ears that were lower than the 

 average. At the end of five years the two fields 

 were so widely diversified that the average height 

 of the ear from the ground in one of them was 

 less than three feet (33.2 inches), whereas in the 

 other field the average height of the ears was 

 fully six feet (72.4 inches). 



One could not well ask a more striking illus- 

 tration than this of the possibility of developing 



