THEORIES AND CONCLUSIONS 



any law or other force governing these 

 peculiar mutations, — which mutations, it has 

 been held, produce new and stable varieties 

 from which Nature selects those which are 

 fit, — Mr. Burbank, times without number, 

 has produced these strange mutations at 

 will. They can be produced, he says, by 

 anybody who systematically sets to work to 

 disturb the life habits of the plants. Thus 

 the peculiar phenomena which scientific ob- 

 servers on a small field have so sedulously 

 studied, and have at last come to consider 

 the result of a supreme act of Nature, are 

 entirely within the province of any market- 

 gardener or amateur plant-breeder. In ad- 

 dition to this, he has demonstrated that 

 that which the scientists have called mutations 

 are not periods in the plant life at all, but 

 only states or conditions, the result of heredi- 

 tary tendencies and environments. 



Putting the matter in condensed form 

 he says : 



"By crossing different species we can form 

 more variations and mutations in a half 

 dozen generations than will be developed by 

 ordinary variations in a thousand generations." 



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