156 LUTHER BURBANK 



higher organisms, whether vegetable or animal, 

 the germ plasm may be a thing apart. As 

 finally segregated, for example, in the ovules 

 and pollen grains, it constitutes a concentrated 

 aggregate that transmits the hereditary factors 

 from generation to generation in a sense inde- 

 pendently of the bodily characteristics of the 

 individual plant itself. 



You may, for example, determine that a given 

 flower and the seed that grows from it shall be 

 of exceptional size and vigor by cutting off all 

 other flowers so that the energy of the plant shall 

 be concentrated on a single one. But in so doing 

 you merely give added vigor to the new genera- 

 tion ; you do not alter its fundamental hereditary 

 characters. These are predetermined by the fac- 

 tors in the germ plasm that have been brought 

 from earlier generations and of which the indi- 

 vidual plant is only the carrier. 



All this, then, suggests the isolation of the 

 germ plasm; and the newest theories of heredity 

 have tended in some cases to emphasize the idea 

 that germ plasm and body plasm are things of 

 a somewhat different order. 



Yet the phenomena of reproduction by root 

 division or by the putting out of new bulbs, fur- 

 nish a striking demonstration that the germ 

 plasm which predetermines the form of the fu- 



