ON HEREDITY 



order to change and control the characteristics of 

 any individual growing thing. 



"The first of these is environment. 



"The rains, the snows, the fogs, the droughts — 

 the heat, the cold — the winds, the change in 

 temperature between night and day — the soil, the 

 location in shade or sun — competition for food, 

 light, air — the neighbors, whether they be plant 

 neighbors, or animal neighbors, or human neigh- 

 bors — all of these, and a thousand other factors 

 which could be thought of, are the elements of 

 environment — some pulling the plant one way and 

 some another, but each with its definite, though 

 sometimes hardly noticeable, influence on the 

 individual plant. 



"And the second is heredity: 



"Which is the sum of all of the environments 

 of a complex ancestry — back to the beginning." 

 ***** 



"Just as with the bear, if the story be true, so 

 in plant life. In every seed that is produced there 

 are stored away the tendencies of centuries and 

 centuries of ancestry. The seed is but a bundle of 

 tendencies. 



"When these tendencies have been nicely 

 balanced by a long continuation of unchanging 

 environment, the offspring is likely to resemble the 

 parent. 



[53] 



