LUTHER BURBANK 



In so far, then, as my work may have been 

 useful to the human race, the principle of quantity 

 production has been justified. 



Viewing the matter in less facetious mood, 1 

 should perhaps hasten to add that the inherent 

 love of nature which was the stimulus to my life 

 work was inherited, in all probability, from my 

 mother. I was her third child, only, as already 

 noted, and of course the fact that my father had 

 children by earlier wives had no bearing on the 

 hereditary influences that she contributed, which, 

 as just suggested, were probably largely respon- 

 sible for the impelling bent that has always domi- 

 nated me. So, in the last analysis, it is necessary 

 to recall that, in so far as we may draw analogies 

 between plant heredities and human heredities, 

 the production of a horticultural Burbank illus- 

 trated a principle lying back of and taking 

 precedence over quantity production — the prin- 

 ciple, namely, of the selection of the right racial 

 strains for blending. 



It is useless to produce plants in quantity unless 

 the parent plants are endowed with the right 

 potentialities. 



And doubtless my father never would have had 

 a child who was an ardent nature worshiper had 

 he not married for his third wife a woman who 

 was a nature lover. 



[10] 



