360 LUTHER BURBANK 



desirable citizen; and mean to imply that the 

 process of crossing and selection has been carried 

 out so well for the past ten generations or so in 

 America that a race has been developed having 

 a very high average of those traits that determine 

 "fitness" for existence in a civilized community. 



It is true that there are certain strains of 

 abnormality — of physical degeneracy, mental 

 obliquity, moral perversion — that have made 

 their way, generation after generation, like weeds 

 in the garden, and that must constantly be reck- 

 oned with just as the gardener reckons with his 

 weeds. But the main body of citizens that make 

 up the population are at least moderately fit to 

 live in harmony with the normal environment of 

 civilization, and by the same token to reproduce 

 their kind. 



Unfortunately, however, there has been a very 

 pronounced tendency within recent decades for 

 the individuals who were reared under the health- 

 ful conditions of the farm and village to make 

 their way to the cities and to take up the rela- 

 tively abnormal life that is forced upon a 

 majority of the city population under existing 

 conditions. 



The offspring of these city dwellers are reared 

 in an environment radically different from the 

 healthful one in which their parents were reared. 



