LUTHER BURBANK 



ply that environment may transform an organism 

 in a single generation in a way so radical as to 

 bid defiance to specific bounds; making the se- 

 quence of evolution a haphazard performance 

 which we cannot believe compatible with the or- 

 derly progress of nature. 



We are bound to believe, then, that when we 

 see a plant transformed as to its tangible proper- 

 ties in a single generation, or in a few generations, 

 through the influence of changed environment, 

 we are witnessing the bringing out of suppressed 

 tendencies, the realization of submerged poten- 

 tialities, rather than the implantation and de- 

 velopment of really new traits. 



Making the interpretation specific, we must 

 believe that the Monterey pine, which now in 

 California is a tree of stunted growth, had an- 

 cestors that were rapid-growing mammoth trees. 

 Through unfavorable conditions the result, per- 

 haps, of a glacial epoch the tree gradually modi- 

 fied its habits of growth and perhaps preserved 

 its life through such modification ; but the heredi- 

 tary factors for gigantic growth still existed in 

 its germ-plasm, and awaited only a favorable 

 opportunity to make themselves again manifest. 

 The opportunity came when some chance seeds of 

 the tree were transported to New Zealand, where 

 it chanced that the conditions of soil and climate 

 were such as to favor these long-submerged 

 hereditary factors, giving them opportunity to 

 prove their existence and their latent potentiali- 

 ties for development. 



[300] 



