LUl'HER BURBANK 



spiny armor, each a stronger attempt to respond 

 to environment, were so gradual as to be almost 



imperceptible. 



***** 



But those rudimentary, half formed leaves 

 which come forth from every eye of the cactus 

 slab before the thorns or fruits come out — those 

 leaves which, as if seeing that they have no useful 

 purpose, as if realizing that they are relics, 

 only, of a bygone day, drop off and die — what 

 environment has acted to bring them forth? 



And those two smooth slabs that push out when 

 the tiny seedling has just poked its thorny head 

 above the ground — to what environment do they 

 respond? 



How shall we account for this tendency in a 

 plant to jump out of its own surroundings, and 

 out of the surroundings of its parents, and their 

 parents and those before them — and to respond 

 to the influences which surrounded an extinct 

 ancestor — to hark back to the days when the 

 desert was the moist bottom of an evaporating 

 sea and before the animals came to destroy? 

 ***** 



A group of scientists were chatting with Luther 

 Burbank when a chance remark on heredity led 

 one of them to tell this bear story. 



It seemed, so the story ran, that a baby bear 



[36] 



