284 LUTHER BURBANK 



facts and conditions — that there is little incen- 

 tive, aside from general interest or wandering 

 curiosity, to try to lift the veil which obscures 

 our past — or to peer through the fog which 

 keeps us from seeing what to-morrow has in 

 store. 



In plant growing, more than in any of the 

 world's other industries, does the scheme of evo- 

 lution and a working knowledge of nature's 

 methods cease to be a theory — of far-away im- 

 portance and of no immediate interest — and be- 

 come an actual working factor, a necessary tool, 

 without which it is impossible to do the day's 

 work. 



Whether plant improvement be taken up as a 

 science, as a profession, or as a business — or 

 whether it be considered merely a thing of 

 general interest, an idle hour recreation — there 

 is ever present the need to understand nature's 

 methods and her forces in order to be able to 

 make use of them — to guide them — there always 

 stares us in the face that solitary question : 



"Where — and how — did life start?" 



We have seen in these books color photo- 

 graphs of corn as it may have grown four thou- 

 sand years ago, perhaps. 



It took less than twelve seasons to carry this 

 plant backward some thousands of years. 



