Pick out any trait you want in your child... By surrounding this child with sunshine from the sky and your own heart, by giving the closest communion… - Luther Burbank

The plant laboratories in which this wonderful and vitally essential transformation is effected are chiefly located in the leaf of the plant... the thoughtful person must regard this structure—the most ordinary green leaf of tree or shrub or vine or the tiniest blade of grass—as in some respects the most wonderful thing in the world.

When certain hereditary tendencies are almost indelibly ingrained, environment will have a hard battle to effect a change in the child; but that a change can be wrought by the surroundings we all know. The particular subject may at first be stubborn against these influences, but repeated application of the same modifying forces in succeeding generations will at last accomplish the desired object in the child as it does in the plant.

In manufacturing food for its own cells, the plant is producing a supply of food that will be available for the sustenance of animal cells also. Thus the entire animal World may be said to be a vast parasitic colony as absolutely dependent upon the vegetable colony for its essential food supplies as any other parasite is dependent upon its host.