66 LUTHER BURBANK 



How can two elfin architects hope to harmonize 

 materials like that? It is like getting together 

 two human architects to combine materials for a 

 habitation and finding that the material one has 

 to offer for the house are blocks of stone four feet 

 square while the other has only pebbles. 



And as the conference goes on, the points of 

 discrepancy become only the more apparent. 



All the differences that are manifest between 

 a blackberry bush and an apple tree, and between 

 an apple and a blackberry — together with a mul- 

 titude of intimate distinctions that the crude 

 human senses cannot fathom — are represented by 

 factors that obviously cannot blend. 



So, after studying the matter over and 

 wrangling about it till their heads ache, the elfin 

 builders give up the thing as a bad job. 



Their germ factors lie in separate piles unas- 

 sembled and incapable of being assembled; and 

 the result is that no provision will be made for 

 fruit in the future plant. In other words the 

 plant will be sterile, and that particular double 

 stream of germ plasm will cease to be per- 

 petuated. 



By Way of Summary 



This, then, is what may be imagined to occur 

 when there is too great difference of materials. 

 It may be left to the reader's imagination to make 



