ON ADAPTATION 



Our alfalfa, lettuce and apples, like our horses, 

 our cows, our dogs, have found in man a friend 

 stronger than the strongest of their enemies. 



So their welfare now is measured by the 

 usefulness of the service they can render in repay- 

 ment for man's care. 



* * * * * 



"There is a common snowball in my yard," 

 continued Mr. Burbank, "which advertises alone 

 to me. 



"In the woods around there are other snowballs 

 of the same family wild snowballs into whose 

 life history man, as a part of environment, has 

 never come. 



"The wild snowball, with only a fringe of 

 blossoms, and a mass of egg nests and pollen inside 

 the fringe, is still advertising to the bee. 



"But the snowball in my yard has responded 

 to my care, and to the care of those who went 

 before me, till its stamens and pistils, as if seeing 

 their needlessness, have turned to blossoms till 

 its eggs have grown sterile, even should an insect 

 come. 



"And so, with every snowball which grows in 

 anybody's yard cultivation has relieved it of the 

 need for reproduction, and what was once but a 

 fringe of flowers has been transformed into a 

 solid mass of blossoms. 



