IMPROVING THE HUMAN PLANT 



The offspring of these city dwellers are reared 

 in an environment radically different from the 

 healthful one in which their parents were reared. 



They are crowded into dark, ill-ventilated 

 tenements, amidst surroundings that not only lack 

 the light and air and joyousness of the country, 

 but are often positively vitiated as to their mental 

 and moral no less than as to their physical 

 atmosphere. 



It is as if we were to take the plants that have 

 been bred in the rich, well watered, carefully 

 weeded soil of a garden and transplant them into 

 an infertile, dry soil, choked with weeds and away 

 from sunlight. 



By no chance could we expect the plants under 

 these conditions to attain full growth or to put 

 forth even a fair complement of flowers and fruits. 



The Burbank giant amaryllis bulbs, which un- 

 der proper conditions will put forth splendid 

 stalks bearing flowers ten inches across, would be 

 reduced, under such altered conditions, to the 

 throwing up of meager stalks and, at best, the 

 production of a restricted number of dwarf flowers 

 little calculated to add to the reputation of the 

 plant developer. 



THE POWER OF ENVIRONMENT 



This matter of environment, then, goes hand in 

 hand with heredity and is a final determining fac- 



[219] 



