340 LUTHER BURBANK 



bringing to the surface of latent traits — for ex- 

 ample, whiteness in the blackberry; — could be 

 carried to a sure and rapid culmination without 

 the remotest possibility of guidance from "Men- 

 delism;" secondly, because from this very fact 

 the interpretation of my experiments has fuller 

 significance in its bearing on the truth of the 

 Mendelian formulas than if the experiments had 

 been made with these formulas in mind. 



This is true not alone of the creation of the 

 white blackberry, but of the similar development 

 of the Shasta Daisy and of a host of other new 

 forms of plant life that will find record in suc- 

 cessive chapters of the present work. 



But while I would thus guard the reader 

 against the mistake, which some enthusiasts have 

 made, of assuming that the Mendelian formula 

 about which so much is heard nowadays must 

 revolutionize the methods and results of the plant 

 breeder, I would be foremost to admit that the 

 remarkable work of Mendel himself, together 

 with the work of his numerous followers of the 

 past ten years, has supplied us at once with sev- 

 eral convenient new terms and with a tangible 

 explanation or interpretation of a good many 

 facts of plant and animal heredity that hereto- 

 fore have been but vaguely explicable, even 

 though clearly known and demonstrated as facts. 



