ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 



purpose and desire — each step in this selection 

 representing an advance, which, without our help, 

 might take a hundred or a thousand years to 

 bring about. 



So, in working out any ideal in plant improve- 

 ment, the first factor and the last one is selection. 

 Selection enters into the ideal itself, it enters into 

 every step of its accomplishment, and it enters 

 into the production of every succeeding plant 

 which represents that accomplishment. 

 ***** 



"If you believe that nature makes no mistakes, 

 and has no lapses, how can you account for the 

 evident unfitness of so many individual plants 

 to survive — how can j'ou account for the 

 wastefulness and extravagance which is apparent 

 throughout all forms of plant life?" 



"Leaving nature out of it for the moment," 

 replied Mr. Burbank, "let us look at the work 

 which I have been doing here for forty years. 

 There has hardly been a time during this period 

 when I have had less than twenty-five hundred 

 experiments under way, and there have been 

 seasons when from three to five thousand were in 

 process. I estimate that, right on this three 

 acre tract, considerably more than one hundred 

 thousand definite, separate experiments in plant 

 life have been conducted, in all. 



[189] 



