26 LUTHER BURBANK 



vigorous root only those have survived 

 which mastered their surroundings. 

 Adaptations are perpetuated through the 

 nonsurvival of those who failed in ad- 

 justment, and separate races are fixed by 

 the natural setting apart — through isola- 

 tion — of groups of individuals diverging 

 from the parent form. 



All these slow processes of nature can be 

 accelerated almost indefinitely through 

 a sympathetic knowledge of plant life in 

 general, and the wise application of this 

 knowledge to the attainment of the spe- 

 cial results desired. The experimenter 

 creates his own environment, selecting 

 those individuals which conform, and 

 destroying the others. He then segre- 

 gates the chosen ones, that their qualities 

 may not be lost in breeding with the 

 mass. The law of heredity, '* like pro- 

 duces like," is interwoven inextricably 

 with the law of variation by which no 



