LUTHER BURBANK 



again in connection with a multitude of other 

 plants. 



In the case of the rhubarb, the response was 

 almost immediate. Artificial selection enabled 

 the plants that manifested the atavistic tendency 

 in largest measure, to propagate their kind. 



And thus, in the course of a few generations 

 — though not without making selection among 

 hundreds of thousands of individuals — I was 

 enabled to assist the plant to bring to the surface 

 the long submerged tendencies that impelled it 

 to grow fast, to grow large, and to grow per- 

 petually. 



No New Principle Involved 



And thus the crimson winter rhubarb as it 

 finally came to perfection in my gardens is 

 accounted for. In developing it, no new principle 

 was invoked, no new method even. I merely 

 took advantage of opportunities afforded by the 

 translation of the plant from one hemisphere to 

 another, and aided the plant in putting forth 

 potentialities that had long been repressed but 

 which still stubbornly persisted as latent factors 

 or submerged tendencies in the racial germ- 

 plasm. 



Perhaps the matter seems rather complex as 

 thus explained; and indeed all matters pertaining 

 to living organisms are complex in the last 



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