290 LUTHER BURBANK 



Very commonly a million seedlings are in- 

 volved in a single fraternity. 



Under these conditions, it will be obvious that 

 there was no choice but to select the few indi- 

 viduals that came nearest to the ideals of a mental 

 forecast, ruthlessly destroying the rest to make 

 room for the favored ones. 



And in so doing we were of course duplicating 

 the method of nature herself, although the quali- 

 ties that determined our choice in any given case 

 were not usually those that would have fitted the 

 chosen individuals for preservation in a natural 

 environment. Our selections were made, of 

 course, with the object of fitting the plant to meet 

 human needs and tastes. The selections of 

 nature are made with reference to the needs of 

 the plant itself. 



But if we make allowance for this difference 

 in the point of view, we may say that the 

 principle of selection is exactly the same in 

 each case. 



And we are justified, no doubt, in saying that 

 the experiments in artificial selection made on my 

 experiment farms during the period under re- 

 view, constitute the most elaborate series of ex- 

 perimental proofs of the truth of the Darwinian 

 theory of Natural Selection that have ever been 

 brought forward. 



