374 LUTHER BURBANK 



Students of different examples of Mendelian 

 heredity, as applied to animals and plants, have 

 puzzled long to discover the underlying prin- 

 ciple that determines which character shall be 

 dominant and which recessive. But this simple 

 principle appears to furnish the explanation. 



The new trait or characteristic is dominant 

 over the older one precisely because it is new. 



By making it dominant, nature gives it the 

 best possible chance. It will reproduce itself in 

 all the immediate progeny of the individual that 

 possesses it. Thus nature shows anew that she is 

 progressing. She accepts the new characteristic 

 and gives it more than an even chance. 



But at the same time she is not so foolish as to 

 renounce the old character without full testing. 

 She allows it to be subordinated for a genera- 

 tion, but in the next generation it reappears, iso- 

 lated, to compete with the dominant character. 

 And whether in the end the new dominant char- 

 acter will prove itself and prevail, or whether 

 the recessive character will reestablish itself, de- 

 pends entirely on the value for the species of one 

 character as against the other. 



Mendelian heredity, then, is a testing out 

 process for new characters. It is, as it were, the 

 skirmish line of the advance guard of evolution. 

 So long as a character is subject to Mendelian 



