LUTHER BURBANK 



growth, and produces an amount of valuable 

 lumber that is quite without precedent. 



No species of pine in America produces lum- 

 ber at a rate at all comparable to the records 

 that come to us from New Zealand, telling of the 

 extraordinary productivity of the Monterey pine, 

 which in its native climate is of such slow growth 

 and produces timber of such poor quality that it 

 is not usually listed among timber-producing trees 

 of economic value. 



Now it is obvious that the transplantation of 

 the Monterey pine from California to New Zea- 

 land can in no wise have affected the hereditary 

 tendencies of the tree. Whatever capacities for 

 growth and timber production are revealed by the 

 tree in New Zealand must have existed as poten- 

 tial qualities in the seed that was taken to New 

 Zealand from California. The change has not 

 been brought about from hybridization or by 

 selective breeding. 



It is merely that a new environment new soil, 

 different climate has taken a hand in the de- 

 velopment of the submerged hereditary factors; 

 and under these new influences the tree has been 

 made to reveal possibilities that were hitherto un- 

 suspected. 



So the case of the Monterey pine affords a very 

 striking demonstration of the influence of en- 

 vironment in bringing out unsuspected hereditary 

 tendencies. It furnishes an object lesson in the 

 power of nurture to supplement and even, on 



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