116 LUTHER BURBANK 



value of improved plants which could increase 

 the amount of crops without any added expense 

 whatever. 



Plant potato eyes, and you get potatoes like 

 the parents — ^improving or retrograding a little, 

 according to the present environment in which 

 they grow. 



But plant potato seeds, and you tap a mine of 

 heredity, infinite in its uncertainties, but infinite 

 too in its possibilities. 



During the past twenty-five years I have pro- 

 duced and introduced a hundred or more new 

 plants which give promise of being as valuable 

 as the Burbank potato — a large portion of which 

 have already proven so — though not yet as 

 widely known and grown, and also have hun- 

 dreds yet to introduce as priceless in value as 

 these. 



Heredity is the sum of all of 

 the environments of an infinitely 

 complex ancestry hack to the 

 beginning. 



