LUTHER BURBANK 



eye, opened only a slit, to see simply the things 

 we can touch and feel, we find evidences of adap- 

 tation made possible through variation. 



The violet, responding to kindness, became a 

 pansy. 



The pear, responding to racial tastes, adapted 

 itself to the Orientals and to us. 



Corn, responding to a need for food, produced 

 forty times the kernels which it had produced 

 before. 



The orange, the lettuce, the celerj', and eveiy 

 cultiv^ated plant that grows, responding to our 

 market demands, have transformed themselves to 

 meet a readier sale. 



And those daffodil and narcissus seedlings, how 

 eloquently they tell of the adaptation of a plant 

 to fit an individual ideal! 



***** 



We studied electricity a long time without 

 much apparent practical benefit. Then suddenly 

 electric lights and trolley cars were everj-where. 



We knew tlie principles of sound vibration for 

 centuries before the telephone and the phonograph 

 appeared, but it took less than a generation to 

 make them universal. 



We dreamed motor carriages three hundred 

 years before ^^'C got one, and then, in a decade, we 

 av.'oke to find our dream come true. 



[13Sj 



