82 LUTHER BURBANK 



acteristics to fit itself to the new conditions which 

 surround it. 



It will have changed its structure to bear 

 weight and stand strains. It will have modified 

 its internal mechanism to transmit moisture in- 

 stead of to store it. It will have remodeled its 

 outer skin to protect itself from the ground 

 animals from which it had no reason to fear 

 destruction while growing higher up on the 

 parent plant. 



Is it more wonderful that, unseen by us, a 

 plant should have adapted itself to the desert 

 and, through the ages, have armored itself 

 against an enemy, than that, before our eyes, 

 in a single year, it should meet changed condi- 

 tions in an equally effective way? 



Is it more wonderful that it should grow 

 spines than it should grow slabs which in turn 

 have the power to grow other slabs? 



Is not the really wonderful thing the fact that 

 it grows at all? 



The cactus is one of the most plastic of plants 

 — educated up to this, perhaps, by the hardships 

 and battles through which its ancestry has 

 fought its way. 



A slip cut from a rosebush, for example, must 

 be planted in carefully prepared ground of a 

 suitable kind, at a certain season of the year, 



