LUTHER BURBANK 



tor in deciding the character of the individual 

 product 



It is quite useless to have practiced the most 

 rigid selection among plants for any number of 

 generations, and thereby to have produced varie- 

 ties of the most splendid possibilities — unless the 

 plants of the newest generation are given proper 

 soil and nourishment and sunshine they will come 

 to nothing. 



And so it is with the human plant. Despite the 

 good heredity of generations of ancestors bred, let 

 us say, from the old Pioneer stock in New England 

 or Virginia or from the transplanted cions of that 

 stock in the Middle or Far West, the coming gen- 

 erations will be dwarfed and perverted representa- 

 tives of their race if they are denied a normal en- 

 vironment, particularly in childhood. 



So one of the great problems that confronts the 

 humanitarian of to-day is the problem of provid- 

 ing a proper environment for the human plant. 



In the decade covered by the most recent census 

 returns (1901-1910) the total population of the 

 United States increased by 21 per cent. But the 

 rural population increased by only 14 per cent, and 

 the city population by 38 per cent. There are entire 

 states in which the rural population did not in- 

 crease at all, and these were precisely those middle 

 western farming districts that supply the health- 



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