ON ADAPTATION 



The pear trees which have pleased us have 

 received our care and cultivation — and we have 

 multiplied them. The pear trees which have failed 

 to produce fruit up to our ideals we have neglected 

 and allowed to die — so that they have practically 

 disappeared from our orchards. 



The Orientals, their tastes and likes running in 

 opposite directions from ours, have discouraged 

 pear trees which bore the kind of fruit we prefer, 

 and have selected, and saved, and fostered, and 

 propagated those which gave them the hard, bitter 

 fruit of their ideals. 



And so the struggle for adaptation set in 

 motion by the soil, the warmth, the cold, the 

 moisture, and the winds, was supplemented by the 

 bees, and then by the birds, until now we can 

 read, in the result, our own influence and that of 

 the Japanese. 



There are differences between our dress and 

 the dress of the Orientals; between our religions 

 and the religions of the Orientals; between our 

 ambitions and the Oriental ambitions; between 

 our architecture and the architecture of the Orient 

 — all reflecting the national or racial differences 

 between the ideals of the two peoples. 



And just as surely as the ideals of a people 

 influence the architecture with which they sur- 



[125] 



