NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
attributes through centuries of life, while, at 
the same time, as steadily rejecting other 
attributes; just as successive generations of a 
given family gather and reject certain family 
traits? How much of it was heredity, how 
much of it environment, how much a direct 
mingling of these two, how much, if any, 
could be traced to neither? 
And then the other word, Why?) Why 
was all this done, and why was it all so 
persistently veiled from human eyes? 
In the midst of the exacting toil as he 
worked among his plants, this constant study 
of Nature broadened his mind. Year by year 
his sight became more refined, his knowledge 
deeper. He read much upon the subject, 
particularly Darwin. He made the most 
careful study of the conclusions reached by 
other men who had sought for the secrets 
of Nature’s life, and how they came to these 
conclusions. Sometimes noting that certain 
improbable conclusions had been reached 
from certain premises, he set to work to 
discover the soundness of the premises, only 
to find that they were unsafe to trust. He 
early discovered, also, that some of the men 
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