LUTHER BURBANK 



along any line which has made it more desirable 

 or more marketable. 



Its evolution, then, has been simply a slow 

 response to a new environment which for the first 

 time in its history included man. 



Suijpose, now, that we desire to work, in a 

 single season or a dozen seasons, an improvement 

 in this vegetable which will overshadow all of the 

 improvement which countless generations of culti- 

 vation and unconscious selection have wrought. 



Our first step is to secure its wild counterpart — 

 inedible, maybe, sour, perhaps, tough, no doubt; 

 wdiolly undesirable as compared with the plant 

 which the seed bought at any grocery store will 

 produce. 



Nevertheless in the wild brother of our plant 

 there is confined an infinity of old heredity just 

 as an infinitj^ of old heredity was confined in 

 those two daisies; and the bees, and the winds, 

 can bring forth variation between the tame and 

 the wild, just as striking and jvist as widely 

 divergent as the variations in the daisies. 



Perhaps the first attempt to mix up the 

 heredities of the tame and the wild might produce 

 no improvement — only retrogression. But if we 

 keep on mixing heredities and combining com- 

 binations of them, we shall soon see before us 

 evidences of all of the tendencies of the plant — 



[1641 



