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light, and at a subsequent meeting of the New York Florists’ Club, I enlarged on 
the subject, and thus my name became connected with “Burbankitis,” as it is 
called. 
Mr. Burbank unquestionably says things very well; at least I think so. He 
has a happy knack of saying things. A good many of them are somewhat in- 
volved, but nevertheless, a thing that one cannot quite understand appeals to us 
sometimes as being very wise. But he says some things that appear easy to under- 
stand, and one of them is this : “Heredity is the sum of all past environment.” Now 
if heredity is the sum of all past environment, it is a foregone conclusion that 
a plant produced in the climate of California and raised in that climate will have 
to dissociate itself from its environment when it is brought East, and therefore 
it is heavily handicapped before it can achieve distinction in commerce in this 
section of the country. This is from “An Appreciation,” by Mr. Wickson : “For 
such a gifted seer neither weird altar fires nor incense cloud nor ecstatic state 
could add to insight. He could hear the 'still small voice’ without preparatory 
earthquake or whirlwind. Like David of old, he could do his work with smooth 
pebbles from the brook and he cast aside the elaborate armament of his scientific 
brethren lest it should impede his movements.” 
There is a desperate attempt being made to make a scientific man out of 
Mr. Burbank; that is, to put him amongst the scientists, or rather, to make him 
first among equals, or even to put him above the scientist ; in fact above the men 
whom we florists have come to regard as scientists, such as the men in charge of 
experiment stations and the United States Department of Agriculture. 
I want to remark parenthetically, from having read what Mr. Burbank has 
written, and from Mr. Harwood in the magazines- — -also from what I have 
gleaned from his little books of “creations,” that I am rather inclined to think his 
(Mr. Burbank’s) science is somewhat of the Mary Baker Eddy or Helen Wil- 
mans order. 
The next quotation is : “Plant development is one of the phases of civilization, 
and it makes new conquests as they are needed in the onward rush of mankind. 
We are now at the beginning of an epoch of accelerated motion in this direction. 
Burbank is the prophet of this epoch. Obeying the command of the infinite he 
is carrying the gates of Gaza. Let not the Delilah of modern organization shear 
him of his God-given strength and make him like other men.” 
Then he reaches out and gets the $100,000. 
The other day we had Professor Ostwald of Leipsic lecturing at Columbia 
University. I do not believe the Professor ever met Mr. Burbank, and therefore 
he must have drawn his inspiration from the published accounts. He believes 
“that science is able to produce a piece of protoplasm and command it in the first 
step of evolution ; that man has control of vegetable life, taking it out of the 
slow hands of nature and hastening its evolution from one form to another. The 
man Burbank, for instance, has so assisted nature in this work that she is almost 
out of a job. By combination and evolution, he produces new forms at will, and 
endows them with economic values that nature left undeveloped We call him a 
