Scientific Aspects of Luther Burbank' s Work 



bear a larger, or a sweeter, or a firmer sort of 

 plum, or more plums than the others. So to the 

 bonfires with the others and to the company of 

 the elect with this ' fittest ' one. Now this recog- 

 nition, this knowledge of correlations in plant 

 structure, born of the exercise of a genius for 

 perceiving through thirty years of opportunity for 

 testing and perfecting it, is perhaps the most 

 important single thing which Burbank brings to 

 his work that cither men do not (at least in such 

 unusual degree of reliability). Enormous indus- 

 try, utter concentration and single-mindedness, 

 deftness in manipulation, fertility in practical re- 

 source, has Burbank — and so have numerous 

 other breeders and experimenters. But in his 

 perception of variability in its forming, his recog- 

 nition of its possibilities of outcome, and in his 

 scientific knowledge of correlations, a knowledge 

 that is real, for it is one that is relied on and built 

 on, and is at the very foundation of his success^ 

 Burbank has an advantage of true scientific char- 

 acter over his fellow workers, and in it he makes 



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