316 LUTHER BURBANK 



suited from the mixing of the various strains of 

 daisies, it will be clear that I am assuming that 

 the different ancestral races were all evolution- 

 ary products that owed their special traits of 

 stem and leaf and flower to the joint influence 

 of heredity and environment. 



I am assuming that there was a time in the 

 remote past when all daisies had a common 

 ancestral stock very different from any existing 

 race of daisies. 



TOUKING THE WoKLD 



The descendants of that ancestral stock spread 

 from the geographical seat of its origin — ^which 

 may perhaps have been central Asia — in all direc- 

 tions. In the course of uncounted centuries, and 

 along channels that are no longer traceable, the 

 daughter races ultimately made their way to op- 

 posite sides of the world. Some now found them- 

 selves in Europe, some in America, some in Japan. 



Thousands of years had elapsed since the long 

 migration began; yet so persistent is the power 

 of remote heredity that the daisies of Europe and 

 America and Japan even now show numerous 

 traits of resemblance and proof of their common 

 origin that lead the botanist to classify them in 

 the same genus. But, on the other hand, these 

 races show differences of detail as to stem and 



