LUTHER BURBANK 



In very recent years, however, there has been 

 great progress in the way of ameliorating the en- 

 vironment, in particular the environment of child- 

 hood, through improvement in the understanding 

 of hygiene and the prevention of disease, so that 

 there is no longer the weeding out of the unfit in 

 infancy that occurred even a single generation 

 ago; so the generation of to-morrow are con- 

 fronted with problems of selection in the breeding 

 of the human race more urgent than ever before. 



The problem is complicated by the fact that 

 the more intelligent members of the community 

 precisely the ones that should be selected for the 

 propagation of the race are prone to restrict the 

 number of their offspring, whereas the less desir- 

 able parents practice no such restriction. 



The obvious tendency of this must be com- 

 parable to the condition of a flower garden in 

 which the best plants are restricted to the produc- 

 tion of one or two seed pods while the poorer 

 varieties are allowed to scatter their seeds by 

 indiscriminate thousands. 



The plant breeder who permitted such a con- 

 dition to obtain in his garden would assuredly not 

 produce improved races of plants. 



And the human system which permits such a 

 condition to obtain cannot hope to better the aver- 

 age condition of the human race. 



[214] 



