THE HUMAN PLANT 371 



showing desirable qualities, and can eliminate the 

 thousands that are unfit. 



As a single illustration, let us recall the Phe- 

 nomenal berry, a hybrid of the California dew- 

 berry and the Cuthbert raspberry. It will be 

 recalled that this individual plant was the only 

 one worth preserving out of a h5^brid colony of 

 many thousand individuals. 



The one valuable plant was carefully pre- 

 served and nurtured. The thousands of unde- 

 sirables were piled in a heap and burned. The 

 blending of different racial strains had produced 

 one highly prized new specific form. Granted 

 the privilege of destroying the undesirables, the 

 experiment was eminently worth making and the 

 results were altogether gratifying. 



But what if it had been incumbent on the 

 plant developer to preserve the thousands of 

 undesirable hybrids? 



Not all of them were altogether obnoxious, 

 to be sure. Yet a very large proportion of them 

 combined racial traits of remote ancestors in 

 such a way as to make them very unfit members 

 of a colony of cultivated plants. 



Lacking the selecting hand of the plant experi- 

 menter, which could ruthlessly rout out these 

 undesirables, the net result of the hybridizing 

 experiment would have been to produce a vast 



