THE NEW EARTH 



stamina. Just so races deteriorate left long to 

 themselves with no inflow of foreign blood. 

 People who intermarry notoriously within the 

 families of blood, must count on a deficient 

 progeny. Diversity, change, admixture — all 

 have their part to play in the preservation of a 

 powerful people. 



The wheat, however, has no power of choice. 

 It cannot cross itself with another and stronger 

 life. It has no recourse to artificial means by 

 which it may start out fresh upon a dominant 

 career. The wheat flower opens in the dull 

 gray dawn while the world is asleep, drops its 

 pollen upon its own stigma, fertilizes itself, 

 goes on forever reproducing itself while the 

 centuries last. It has been claimed, though the 

 claim has been disputed by scientists, that 

 wheat preserved in a mummy's tomb three 

 thousand years will, when planted, produce 

 splendid grain, and that kernels from the same 

 wheat planted a thousand years from now 

 must ripen the same. However this may be, a 

 wheat in harvest from the dawn of Christianity 

 until this present day, would never of its own 

 initiative have changed in type. 



But man enters; the wheat is transformed; 



52 



