LUTHER BURBANK 



hearken to Nature's voice in regard to the devel- 

 opment of species, notwithstanding its insistence, 

 had it not been my good fortune to be passing 

 through the most receptive period of adolescence 

 just at the time when the new teaching of Darwin 

 created a turmoil in every field of thought. 



To me, from the outset, the teaching of the 

 evolutionist carried absolute conviction. 



Having no preconceptions to overcome, I was 

 receptive to a point of view that to older men 

 schooled in another line of thought seemed re- 

 pellent or difficult. To me it seemed almost axio- 

 matic that Darwin's teaching about the flexibility 

 of species and the evolution of one form from 

 another expressed the simple truth; for I had not 

 been trained to observe Nature from the opposite 

 point of view, as most of my elders had been 

 trained. 



So I cannot recall the time when the word 

 "species," as applied to any animal or plant, was 

 for me anything but a convenient symbol to des- 

 ignate a more or less transitory condition in 

 which a particular family of organisms chanced 

 at a particular time to find itself. 



Following the teaching of Darwin, I could 

 readily perceive that no two individuals of any 

 species are alike; but that, on the contrary, varia- 

 tion is the universal rule in nature. And it was 



[44] 



