LUTHER BURBANK 



and two thousand years for the Orientals to 

 produce the pear they liked. 



Yet, as plant improvement goes, the pear 

 was quick to respond to its environment; other 

 fruit improvements wrought through unconscious 

 selection have taken ten times as long. 



On the other hand we see Luther Burbank's 

 cherry tree, bearing more than five hundred dif- 

 ferent kinds of cherries at the same time, cherries 

 produced to compare with a mental blue print 

 less than three years old — cherries, from among 

 which, one, at least, wdll be found, which will 

 lead the way to the achievement of the ideal. 



And, similarly, in every department of plant 

 life, whether it be in farm plants, or garden 

 plants, or forest plants, or law^n plants, or orchard 

 plants, or whether it be in plants which we grow 

 for their chemical content, or for their fibers, or 

 what — we sliall find that it is possible to devise 

 short-cuts into the centuries to come, and through 

 combining stored up hereditj^ with new environ- 

 ment, to hurrj' evolution to produce for us entirely 

 new plants to meet our specific desires. 



— Who shall say that progress, any 

 progress, is not worth all it costs? 



