LUTHER BURBANK 



for assimilation as plant food until combined with 

 carbon dioxide which is transformed in the leaf 

 cells under the influence of the active rays of light, 

 first into fruit sugars and by later transformation 

 to cane sugar but oftener to starch, a more stable 

 form of food substance, in which form it is 

 most commonly stored in seeds, bulbs, tubers or 

 enlarged roots or stems, or to wood and less often 

 to various other substances used in the economy 

 of plant life and quite often useful to animal 

 life and to the industrial life of man. These 

 transformations are presented to us in the various 

 food products and the numerous gums, rubber, 

 coloring materials, drugs, oils, and perfumes. 



Thus it will be seen that every organic structure 

 on the earth, every plant and animal whether of 

 earth, sea or air, including man himself, is wholly 

 dependent upon the food always first developed 

 in the leaves of the plants. 



But to return to our cions a twig of the Bald- 

 win apple, grafted on a wild crab apple tree, will 

 produce Baldwin apples, and not wild crab apples. 

 Moreover, the Baldwin apples thus grown will be 

 identical in appearance and flavor with those that 

 grow on the tree from which the cion was cut. 

 This seems very mysterious, but the like of it is 

 matter of every day observation in the orchard of 

 the up-to-date fruit-grower. 



[154] 



