LUTHER BURBANK 



itself stray atoms that are brought into its neigh- 

 borhood, shape them into its own structure, some- 

 what as a brick-layer shapes the bricks into the 

 walls of a building, and thus increase constantly 

 in size. 



It is this capacity of the germ plasm to gather 

 material and utilize it in expanding its structure- 

 together with the further capacity to move in re- 

 sponse to environing forces that is the underlying 

 mystery of the entire life-process, including the 

 interesting aspects of it that we see manifested 

 through heredity. 



In a word, a fruit-bud is a walled city tenanted 

 with a multitude of complex structures, and the 

 mere size of the bud, in our clarified view, has 

 nothing whatever to do with the wonder of its 

 composite architecture. 



The phenomena of the germ cell have hitherto 

 appeared peculiarly mysterious simply because 

 our blunt human senses deal ordinarily with 

 masses of matter of a more tangible size. Now 

 that the microscopist and the physicist have 

 opened the way for us into the microcosm, we see 

 that mere size is of no great significance in the 

 matter, and that there is ample opportunity within 

 the nucleus of the smallest germ cell for an or- 

 ganization of molecules and atoms that for all 

 practical purposes may be at once as complex and 



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