LUTHER BURBANK 



And, as is usual in such cases, unwarranted 

 expectations have been aroused in some quarters 

 as to the real import and meaning of the new point 

 of view; also a good deal of misunderstanding as 

 to the application of the so-called Mendelian laws 

 of heredity to the work of the practical plant 

 developer. 



In view of the latter fact it is well to bear in 

 mind that such experiments in plant breeding as 

 those through which I developed the white black- 

 berry and hundreds of others were made long 

 before anything was known of Mendel and his 

 experiments, and at a time when the conceptions 

 now associated with Mendelism were absolutely 

 unknown to any person in the world. It is well 

 to emphasize this fact for two reasons: first, as 

 showing that practical breeding, resulting in the 

 bringing to the surface of latent traits, — ^for 

 example, whiteness in the blackberry, — could be 

 carried to a sure and rapid culmination without 

 the remotest possibility of guidance from "Men- 

 delism"; secondly, because from this very fact 

 the interpretation of my experiments has fuller 

 significance in its bearing on the truth of the 

 Mendelian formulas than if the experiments had 

 been made with these formulas in mind. 



This is true not alone of the creation of the 

 white blackberry, but of the similar development 



[58] 



