NEW ENGLAND 225 



The Hereditary Background 



I mention these scientific cousins as suggesting 

 that there were certain proclivities that might in 

 part account for the tendencies of a plant devel- 

 oper in the strains of my heredity. But, as what 

 has just been said will further suggest, these 

 were seemingly of a somewhat formal and techni- 

 cally scientific order, whereas the inspiration for 

 my work has been found rather in an ardent 

 love of nature. I desired to deal with the forces 

 of life and mold the plastic forms of living organ- 

 isms rather than to classify the fixed and immu- 

 table phenomena of dead ones, which would 

 appear to be the province of the geologist. 



Doubtless, however, the strain of interest in 

 matters scientific that was evidenced in the geo- 

 logical proclivities of my Burbank cousin consti- 

 tuted an important hereditary element that, 

 mingled with the more poetical and sympathetic 

 elements of nature worship which were in the 

 hereditary strains of my mother's family, 

 rounded out the characteristics of an essentially 

 practical plant developer who loved his task for 

 the very doing of it, yet who never forgot that 

 practical ends must be achieved. 



My nature-loving mother, whose maiden name 

 was Olive Ross, traced her ancestry back to the 



H— Bur. Vol. 8 



