Some Experiments by Luther Burbank 



Luther Burbank, while primarily an artist, is, 

 in his general attitude, essentially a man of science. 

 Academic he doubtless is not, but the qualities we 

 call scientific are not necessarily bred in the acad- 

 emy. Science is human experience tested and 

 set in order. Within the range of his profession 

 of moulding plant life, Mr. Burbank has read 

 carefully, and thought carefully, maturing his own 

 generalizations and resting them on the basis of 

 his own knowledge. Within the range of his 

 own experience he is an original and logical 

 thinker, and his conclusions are in general most 

 sound. He is not a physiologist, still less a histol- 

 ogist, and the phenomena of heredity as shown in 

 cell-division and cell-multiplication, he has not 

 studied for himself. The researches of Weismann 

 and those suggested by his theories of heredity 

 Burbank has given little attention to, and he has, 

 therefore, a confidence in the inheritance of ac- 

 quired characters, such as effects of environment, 

 which most biologists of today do not share. On 

 the other hand, many of the best of them would 



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