ON FACT VS. THEORY 



accomplishment; that combinations between the 

 next higher divisions, genera, were beyond the 

 power of man to effect. 



"Then, when I was able, after a time, to take 

 parents of two different genera, like the crinum 

 and the amaryllis, or the peach and the almond, or 

 a score of others which might be mentioned, and 

 to effect successful seed-producing combinations 

 between them, I began to hear less and less about 

 laws and rules. 



"The fact is that the laws and the rules are all 

 man-made. 



"Nature, herself, has no hard and fast mode of 

 procedure. She limits herself to no grooves. She 

 travels to no set schedule. 



She proceeds an inch at a time or a league- 

 moving forward, always, but into an unmapped, 

 uncharted, trackless future. 



"I like to think of Nature's processes as end- 

 lessly flowing streams; streams in which varied 

 strains of heredity are ever pouring down through 

 river beds of environment; streams which, for 

 ages, may keep to their channels, but each of 

 which is apt, at any time, to jump its banks and 

 find a different outlet. 



"Just about the time we decide that one of 

 these streams is fixed and permanent, there is 

 likely to come along a freshet of old heredity, or 



[213] 



