Complimentary Banquet to Luther Burbank 



J 



The mutations of De Vries, in Burbank's view, are the reflex 

 of new conditions. 



Burbank has shown us that there is no limit to selection. 

 Once started, variation can be intensified ; heredity follows it, 

 and evolution of new forms can be led on and on as far as a 

 continuous purpK)se may choose to carry it. 



Crossing of varieties of one species, and hybridization of 

 distinct species are one and the same thing. Most crosses are 

 fertile, and the results of a skillful cross save years of slow 

 progress by selection. Crossing is to horticulture what punt- 

 ing is to football. 



Each group of plants behaves in its own way. Each is a 

 law unto itself. For this reason, as no simple, universal law, 

 like the Mendelian law, can be used to cover every hypothesis, 

 a thousand seedling walnuts, descended from hybrid parents, 

 differ from each other in a thousand ways — in every way 

 conceivable in which walnuts can differ. 



The advance of flowers, fruits and grains beyond the 

 primitive types is as great as the advance of palaces as com- 

 pared with wigwams of steamships as compared with dug- 

 out canoes. In Pliny's time, the pear was a little rough fruit, 

 not larger than an olive. In future time, we may go as far 

 beyond the Bartlett pear as that has advanced over the crab- 

 pear of the age of Pliny. We are now in the infancy of the 

 work of producing domestic races of animals and plants. No 

 one can forecast the possibilities of the future. And no one 

 will do more than Burbank to make them actual. 



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