LUTHER BURBANK 



which in the main was beneficial to the species. 

 It will be clear, I trust, how this illustration bears 

 directly on the case of our winter rhubarb. 

 Restoring Submerged Instincts 



It could make no difference to the roots of this 

 plant that they had been unwittingly transplanted 

 from a land where winter comes in July to a land 

 where that month betokens summer. The instinct 

 of bearing at that particular season had all the 

 force of the instinct that impels the bird to 

 migrate at a given time; and this instinct could 

 by no chance be repressed in a given generation, 

 any more than the martins could make over their 

 migratory instinct to fit a transitory condition. 



But all this leaves quite unexplained the other 

 fact, which bore so important a part in our story, 

 that the New Zealand rhubarb when transplanted 

 to California assumed a new habit of bearing 

 during the cold season of the Northern Hemis- 

 phere which corresponded to the summer of its 

 original habitat and therefore to a calendar period 

 at which its immediate ancestors had been accus- 

 tomed to assume a condition of dormancy. 



How is our theme of the power of instinctive 

 habit to be made to coincide with this seemingly 

 illogical departure? 



Our answer is found, as it has been found 

 in the explanation of other anomalies of plant 



[190] 



