LUTHER BURBANK 



lets in a season. Here is a hybrid between a 

 crinum and an amaryllis, the bulb of which is far 

 larger than a man's head, although neither parent 

 had a bulb of unusual dimensions. And yonder 

 is a hybrid gladiolus with a double row of petals, 

 sprung from parents that bore flowers with no 

 suggestion of doubleness. 



UNEARTHING EEMOTE HEREDITIES 



In attempting to explain these anomalies, we 

 are led to conclude that every individual plant 

 carries in its germ-plasm a multitude of heredi- 

 tary factors that are, as it were, submerged be- 

 neath other factors and prevented from making 

 their presence tangibly manifest. There is appar- 

 ently no limit to the number of generations 

 through which a hereditary factor may be carried 

 latent and seemingly impotent, yet always ready 

 to manifest itself when the opportunity arises. 

 And the opportunity may come through a hybrid- 

 ization that brings new coteries of hereditary fac- 

 tors into the combination, with resultant redis- 

 tributions that no one could predict, but which 

 may be very striking and highly suggestive and 

 interesting in their manifestations. 



The gigantic trumpet of the hybrid amaryllis 

 and the enormous bulb of the hybrid crinum are 

 reminiscent of past ages when remote ancestors 

 of these plants grew under favoring tropical con- 

 ditions of an earlier geographical era, and put 

 forth flowers and bulbs of which the best present- 



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