LUTHER BURBANK 



thoroughly fixed that in a lifetime it would be 

 impossible, through pure environment, to over- 

 throw it. 



Let us next take a twenty-foot flower bed, say, 

 divide it in the middle, plant one side solid with 

 the orange daisies, and the other side solid with 

 white daisies, and let the bees and the breezes mix 

 those heredities up to produce for us the new pink 

 daisy which we have planned to produce. 



Up come the orange flowers, and up come the 

 white. The breezes and the bees carry the pollen 

 from flower to flower; the petals fall away, and 

 disclose the pods of fertile seed in which, for the 

 first time, these two strains of heredities are 

 combined. 



In the millions of seeds which we can beat 

 out of these pods, there are some with the white 

 tendencies stored away unaltered, some with the 

 orange tendencies still predominant some with 

 white pulling evenly against orange to make a 

 red, some with orange slightly stronger than white, 

 and all of the infinity of variation in between. 



We shall find in those seeds the mixed ten- 

 dencies not only of the two species, but of all of 

 the families of two species, and of the individuals 

 of those families; mixed, upset, disturbed so 

 thoroughly that, not only will the life history of 

 both parents be laid bare in the resulting plants, 



[150] 



