94 LUTHER BURBANK 



spiny armor, each a stronger attempt to respond 

 to environment, were perhaps so gradual as to 

 be imperceptible. 



But those rudimentary, half-formed leaves 

 which come forth from every eye of the cactus 

 slab before the thorns or fruits come out — those 

 leaves which, no longer serving any useful pur- 

 pose, soon turn yellow, die, and fall off — which 

 environment has acted to reject though once 

 of fundamental importance to the plant? 



And those two smooth slabs that push out 

 when the tiny seedling has just poked its thorny 

 head above the ground — why should they be 

 smooth while the first central leaf is thorny? 



How shall we account for this tendency in a 

 plant to jump out of its own surroundings, and 

 out of the surroundings of its parents, and their 

 parents and those before them — and to respond 

 to the influences which surround an extinct an- 

 cestor — to hark back to the days when the desert 

 was the moist bottom of an evaporating sea and 

 before the animals came to destroy? 



A group of scientists were chatting with me 

 once when a chance remark on heredity led one 

 of them to tell this bear story: 



It seems that a baby bear had been picked up 

 by miners within a few days after its birth — be- 

 fore its eyes had opened. The cub, in fact, was 



