216 LUTHER BURBANK 



selves to their environment. They soon adapt 

 themselves to the new colors and combinations 

 of colors that man has given the flowers, and 

 they go about their task with undiminished 

 celerity and certainty. 



Recognition of the fact that wild flowers have 

 been given their colors by the insects through the 

 slow process of natural selection (in which 

 flowers that lack the color were not visited by 

 the bees and hence produced no offspring; 

 whereas the flowers that did produce the color 

 were fertilized, and perpetuated their kind, and 

 reproduced their qualities in abundant progeny) 

 gives us the clue to the way in which we may go 

 about the development of a new color or color 

 combination in a flower. 



Suppose, for example, we desire to change the 

 flower from white to yellow. How shall we go 

 about it? 



First of all, we must produce thousands of 

 seedlings from our white flower. Let them blos- 

 som, and then search among them with the keen- 

 est eye to detect a trace of yellow color which 

 is found more or less in all white flowers in the 

 flowers of any single plant. 



You are almost certain, if your scrutiny is suf- 

 ficiently keen, to detect some plant that varies an 

 infinitesimal shade from its fellows, showing at 



