216 LUTHER BURBANK 



which, so far, have resulted in a better fruit, or 

 a better flower, or a more marketable nut, or a 

 more useful plant — that is enough better in all 

 respects to warrant its introduction. 



On the other hand, I should feel repaid for all 

 the work I have done if only a dozen of these 

 experiments had turned out to be successes. It 

 is in the very nature of experimentation — we 

 must try many things in order to accomplish a 

 few. 



And this is just what is going on in nature all' 

 the time — excepting that where we might get 

 one success out of forty failures, there might be 

 but one out of a thousand or a million if the 

 plants were left to work out their own improve- 

 ment unaided. 



Then, after all, the unsuccessful experiments 

 are failures only in a comparative sense. 



If you have ever watched the bridge builders 

 constructing a concrete causeway, you must have 

 seen the false construction which was necessary 

 — the stout wooden structure into which the 

 plastic material was poured — a costly structure 

 in itself which was put up only to be torn down. 



We cannot call this wooden structure extrav- 

 agance or waste, because it was a necessary step 

 in the completion of the work. And so, while, 

 in nature, we find many individuals which are 



