LUTHER BURBANK 



from either of the grandparental forms as to jus- 

 tify his use of the term "new creations. " 



The only plausible explanation of such anom- 

 alies is that the qualities thus newly revealed and 

 accentuated were traits that had been manifested 

 by remote ancestors, but which had been subordi- 

 nated and submerged through conflict with other 

 more or less antagonistic traits in the ancestral 

 germ-plasm. 



So striking were the modifications that Mr. 

 Burbank was thus enabled to produce at will 

 through the hybridizing of divergent forms that 

 he came to feel confident of being able to modify 

 almost any form of plant life, and produce strik- 

 ing new varieties, provided an allied form could 

 be found with which hybridization could be ef- 

 fected. 



When the celebrated Amsterdam botanist, Pro- 

 fessor Hugo De Vries, came forward with his 

 theory of mutation, according to which a form of 

 plant life may now and again diverge radically 

 from its parent forms through "spontaneous" 

 variation, constituting a new form of "mutation," 

 Mr. Burbank was first to assert that such mutant 

 forms were explicable as due to hybridization. 



He asserted that he himself produced muta- 

 tions at will through hybridization, and the long 

 list of his plant developments afforded striking 

 verification of his claim. 



More than this, Mr. Burbank 's experiments 

 led him to believe that hybridization takes place 

 among plants and animals in a state of nature 



[280] 



