LUTHER BURBANK 



the germ plasm may be a thing apart. As finally 

 segregated, for example, in the ovules and pollen 

 grains, it constitutes a concentrated aggregate that 

 transmits the hereditary factors from generation 

 to generation in a sense independently of the 

 bodily characteristics of the individual plant. 



You may, for example, determine that a given 

 flower and the seed that grows from it shall be of 

 exceptional size and vigor by cutting off all other 

 flowers so that the energy of the plant shall be 

 concentrated on a single one. But in so doing you 

 merely give added vigor to the new generation; 

 you do not alter its fundamental hereditary char- 

 acters. These are pre-determined by the factors 

 in the germ plasm that have been brought from 

 earlier generations and of which the individual 

 plant is only the carrier. 



All this, then, suggests the isolation of the germ 

 plasm; and the newest theories of heredity have 

 tended to emphasize the idea that germ plasm 

 and body plasm are things of a somewhat different 

 order. 



Yet the phenomena of reproduction by root 

 division or by the putting out of new bulbs, fur- 

 nish a striking demonstration that the germ plasm 

 which predetermines the form of the future plant 

 is present not alone in the pollen grain and the 

 ovule, but also in the bulb. 



[98] 



