LUTHER BURBANK 



Every tree in the orchard, for example, car- 

 ries within its tissues a portion of protoplasmic 

 matter that has come down to it through an 

 almost infinite series of growths and divisions in 

 unbroken succession from the first tree that ever 

 developed on the earth or, for that matter, from 

 a vast series of more primitive organisms that 

 were the progenitors of the first tree. 



And while this stream of primordial proto- 

 plasm has been changed by an infinitesimal 

 quantity in each successive era, it has retained 

 even to the present the fundamental character- 

 istics that it had from the outset. 



That such is the case seems little less than a 

 miracle; that an almost microscopical speck of 

 protoplasm which we term a pollen grain should 

 contain the potentialities of thousands of genera- 

 tions of ancestors, and should be able to transmit 

 them with such force that the seed growing from 

 the ovule fertilized by that pollen grain will 

 inevitably produce, let us say, an apple tree, not 

 a pear tree or a plum, is beyond comprehension. 



Yet we know it to be true. 



And so the plant hybridizer who consciously 

 merges two different protoplasmic streams when 

 he brings the pollen of one flower to the pistil of 

 another, participates in what must be considered 

 the most wonderful of all experiments. 



[54] 



