230 LUTHER BURBANK 



better individual plants to bear the fruit which 

 reproduces the original selected ideal. 



Everything we do, then, is simply done to 

 facilitate selection. 



We produce new plants in enormous quanti- 

 ties, in order that there may be many from which 

 to select; and having selected, we destroy nine 

 hundred and ninety-nine one thousandths of our 

 work. 



We strive all the while to produce quick re- 

 sults — to eliminate the long waits and to shorten 

 those that we cannot wholly eliminate — simply 

 so that our selection may be truly comparative 

 — as that of five hundred fruits tasted in a single 

 afternoon, and so that lingering expectancy may 

 not prejudice our judgment, or the result. 



It took two thousand years or more to bring 

 about the juicy American pear by unconscious 

 selection — and two thousand years for the Ori- 

 entals to produce the pear they liked. 



Yet, as plant improvement goes, the pear was 

 quick to respond to its environment; other fruit 

 improvements wrought through unconscious se- 

 lection have taken ten times as long. 



On the other hand we see the cherry tree, bear- 

 ing more than five hundred different kinds of 

 cherries at the same time, cherries produced to 

 compare with a mental blue print less than three 



