LUTHER BURBANK 



observed that the stamens advance alternately, 

 numbers one, three, and five in turn; numbers 

 two, four, and six following in succession, as if 

 the entire mechanism were actuated by clock 

 work. 



But these and sundry other ingenious mech- 

 anisms for self-fertilization after all only evidence 

 the resourcefulness of a plant in its struggle for 

 self-preservation. 



It is better that a flower should be self- 

 pollenized than that it should not be pollenized 

 at all. But the process is in no wise comparable, 

 in its value for the race, to the more usual process 

 of cross-fertilization. 



The self-fertilized plant develops fixity of race. 

 It lacks the needed stimulus of the blending of 

 different racial strains. It will produce few 

 varieties, thus giving little opportunity for the 

 operation of natural selection. 



In a word, such a plant is really marked for 

 ultimate extinction, unless, as in the case of the 

 wheat, man steps in to give it the refuge of 

 artificial selection. 



It may well be doubted whether the existing 

 races of cultivated wheat could perpetuate their 

 species, if put upon their own resources in 

 competition with wild plants, for a dozen or two 

 dozen years. 



[80] 



