218 LUTHER BURBANK 



beauty, fragrance, joy, love, and hope to life. 

 The fruits formed through the more deliberate 

 steps of science are also fundamental. The foli- 

 age is often injured by the mildew of insincerity 

 and the caterpillars of avarice. The flowers, also, 

 are all too often blasted and destroyed by the 

 same means* and the fruit by worms at the core, 

 which some of the useful but unwelcome facts of 

 science bring to light. 



The mind of man has sounded no limits to 

 time or space. We are learning that all the 

 varied forms and conditions which we know are 

 intimately connected and interdependent upon 

 the past conditions which have shaped their 

 course and structure. The varying influences 

 which have surrounded plants, animals, worlds 

 or atoms have molded their varied characters and 

 tendencies into their present make-up. This we 

 may call heredity or stored environment. The 

 more permanent aggregations with which we are 

 familiar, like rocks, metals, air, water, and hun- 

 dreds of others, seem generally very uniform 

 and fixed in character ; while, if these are assimi- 

 lated and chemically combined into the forms of 

 animals or trees, they are able to vary in aspect, 

 in habit and character in order to adapt them 

 selves to the varying conditions of life. If not 



* Or the fungus of pride at the surface. 



