. The Open court. prunes are stories by themselves, but of his specificproductions and creations volumes could be written. He has placedCalifornia foremost of any state horticulturally; transforming ariddistricts; making half-barren lands more valuable. The extent ofhis work has not been understood. He has pioneered horticidtwreinto the dignity of a science. He has destroyed the frontiers ofspecies, creating by hand species apparently as fixed as those whichdate back to the beginnings of vegetable life. He has broken downthe arbitrary definitions of genera and species. His discoverieshave been
. The Open court. prunes are stories by themselves, but of his specificproductions and creations volumes could be written. He has placedCalifornia foremost of any state horticulturally; transforming ariddistricts; making half-barren lands more valuable. The extent ofhis work has not been understood. He has pioneered horticidtwreinto the dignity of a science. He has destroyed the frontiers ofspecies, creating by hand species apparently as fixed as those whichdate back to the beginnings of vegetable life. He has broken downthe arbitrary definitions of genera and species. His discoverieshave been adopted as the laws of new botanies. This change ofview is amusing. Before him the botanists believed and taught in THE WORK OF LUTHER BURBANK. 305 their text-books that species were complete and absolute. Thenthey lapsed into considering species as merely convenient classifica-tions for differentiated types. Now they are taught as interchange-able, even as non-existent. It is not a revolution perhaps; but, cer-. THE WONDER BERRY—BURBANK. tainly, a revelation. We now know that the characters of plantsmust be distinguished in a different way. By his exposure of inter-mediate links, he has demonstrated a wider interval between vari-eties than was heretofore taught to exist between species. Themitraille between varieties and species had to be abandoned; alsothe theory of a special creative act for different species. He is theoriginal entryman of a new class-book. Observing the canon thatvarieties are the production of law, never of chance, his endeavorhas been to search out the laws and employ the forces which createincrements of change that create and transmit In theirnatural habitat, the energy of plants is expended merely to live asthey are. New species are only produced when variations have beenforced under pressure of contiguous dangerous competition, causingnatural crosses and hybrids. When the same plants are domesti-cated and cultivated, the struggle for li
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade188, booksubjectreligion, bookyear1887
