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Growth is a vital process—an evolution—a marshaling of vagrant unorganized forces into definite forms of beauty, harmony and utility. Growth in some form is about all that we ever take any interest in; it expresses about everything of value to us. Growth in its more simple or most marvelously complicated forms is the architect of beauty, the inspiration of poetry, the builder and sustainer of life, for life itself is only growth, an ever-changing movement toward some object or ideal. Wherever life is found, there, also, is growth in some direction. The end of growth is the beginning of decay. Growth within, is health, content and happiness, and growing things without stimulate and enhance growth within. Whose pulses are not hastened, and who is not filled with joy when in Earth's long circling swing around our great dynamo the Sun, the point is reached where chilling, blistering frosts are exchanged for warmth and growth! When the flowers and grasses on the warm hillsides gleefully hasten up through the soft wet soil, or later when ferns, meadow rues and trilliums thrilled with awakened life, crack through and pushup the loose mellow earth in small mounds-little volcanoes of growth; all these variously organized life forces are expressing themselves each in its own specific way. Each so-called species, each individual has something within itself which we call heredity—a general tendency to reproduce itself in form and habits somewhat definitely after its own kind. NEW SPECIES Most of the ancient and even a large part of modern students of plant and animal life have held that their so-called true species never varied to any great extent, at least never varied from the standard type sufficiently to form what could scientifically be called a new species. Under this view the word heredity has had a very indefinite meaning when used in conjunction with environment; and a never-ending uncertainty has always been apparent as to their relative power in molding individual life. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT When the great rivers of life, which we now see, commenced on this planet they did not at once leap into existence with all their present complicated combinations of forces and motions; all were very insignificant; their slender courses, though simple, were devious and uncertain, at first lacking all the wonderfully varied but slowly acquired adaptations to environment that have come with the ages; all had many obstacles to overcome, many things to learn;—and for long ages were able to respond only to the more powerful or long-continued action of external forces. Many of these frail life streams in the long race down the ages were snuffed out by unfavorable surroundings, unfavorable heredity, or the combination and interaction of both; others more successful have lived to be our contemporaries and to-day the process is still unchanged. If a race has not acquired and stored among its hereditary tendencies sufficient perseverance and adaptability to meet all the changes to which it must always be subjected by its ever-changing environment, it will be left behind and finally destroyed, outstripped by races better equipped for the fray.
(This is the text version. See the photographed version.)
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