LUTHER BURBANK 



This term, natural selection, has obvious pro- 

 priety because it connotes a process closely akin in 

 its results to the artificial selection through which 

 man determines that certain races of animals and 

 plants under domestication shall be preserved, and 

 that others shall be destroyed. But artificial selec- 

 tion is after all only a phase of natural selection, 

 in which man becomes an active influence or a 

 deciding element in environment. 



Because of man's power to transform the con- 

 ditions of soil, to supply artificial heat, and to 

 bring together and hybridize plants and animals 

 that would not come in contact in the state of 

 nature, the results of artificial selection, epitomiz- 

 ing within certain bounds the results of natural 

 selection, may be produced with unexampled 

 celerity. 



Man, for example, eliminates a species in a few 

 decades, where nature would have found no way of 

 correspondingly rapid elimination. The black 

 walnut, for example, has been almost extermi- 

 nated throughout eastern America because man 

 prized its wood for the making of furniture. But 

 for the presence of civilized man the black walnut 

 would doubtless have maintained its position for 

 ages to come, just as it had maintained it through- 

 out the ages of the past. 



Yet we must not forget that on occasion there 



[208] 



