LUTHER BURBANK 



eye, opened only a slit, to see simply the things 

 we can touch and feel, we find evidences of adap- 

 tation made possible through variation. 



The violet, responding to kindness, became a 

 pansy. 



The pear, responding to racial tastes, adapted 

 itself to the Orientals and to us. 



Corn, responding to a need for food, produced 

 forty times the kernels which it had produced 

 before. 



The orange, the lettuce, the celery, and every 

 cultivated plant that grows, responding to our 

 market demands, have transformed themselves to 

 meet a readier sale. 



And those daffodil and narcissus seedlings, how 

 eloquently they tell of the adaptation of a plant 



to fit an individual ideal! 



* * * * * 



We studied electricity a long time without 

 much apparent practical benefit. Then suddenly 

 electric lights and trolley cars were everywhere. 



We knew the principles of sound vibration for 

 centuries before the telephone and the phonograph 

 appeared, but it took less than a generation to 

 make them universal. 



We dreamed motor carriages three hundred 

 years before we got one, and then, in a decade, we 

 awoke to find our dream come true. 



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