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Complimentary Banquet to Luther Burbank 



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mcnt, crossing. Breed the best with the best. Some of the 

 progeny will have the good qualities of both parents, some 

 the bad. If your crosses are wide apart you may get new 

 combinations undreamed of. Select these again. Breed from 

 the best; ruthlessly burn up the rest. A flower is Nature's 

 advertising medium, calling the bees to fertilize her germ 

 cells. There were no showy flowers, flowers with petals, 

 until after there were insects, and to please the insects is the 

 flower's real purpose. You don't want the insects. You must 

 manage the crossing yourself. So snip off the flowers, keep 

 the bees away, and transfer the pollen to the right place with 

 your own dainty fingers. This needs care, skill, patience, 

 science every virtue demanded by the finest art. And in this 

 art no one has been more skillful than Luther Burbank. 

 Crossing and selection, selection and crossing, this is the 

 whole secret, as simple as any of all the secrets of Nature. 

 It is her method of evolution. Arrange the conditions and 

 Nature will do the rest. But it is one of the finest of all 

 fine arts to arrange these conditions, to bring out the results, 

 results all unseen before, but capable of the exactest fore- 

 cast. 



The commercial value of Burbank's work is great. It 

 can be expressed only in figures far beyond its actual cost. 

 But above all commercial values we must place Burbank's 

 contributions to human knowledge. 



Among other things, and I can enumerate but very few, 

 Burbank has shown the plasticity of Nature. Like produces 

 like, but not necessary that which actually is. Children re- 

 semble their parents in this way, that they tend to do like 

 things, to develop in like ways under like conditions. Change 

 these conditions and all results are changed. Make condi- 

 tions better, and new structures and new powers burst out. 



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