The power of environment : nurture versus nature / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.
- Date:
- [1914]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The power of environment : nurture versus nature / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Whereas the Monterey pine in its native country is practically valueless from an economic standpoint, it proves so remarkable a producer of wood in its new home that it has there received the name “The Wonderful Tree”. Reports tell us that the Monterey pine in this new habitat exceeds all other trees in rapidity of growth, and produces an amount of valuable lumber that is quite without precedent. No species of pine in America produces lumber at a rate at all comparable to the records that come to us from New Zealand, telling of the extraordinary productivity of the Monterey pine, which, in its native climate, is of such slow growth and produces timber of such poor quality that it is not usually listed among timber-producing trees of economic value. Now it is obvious that the transplantation of the Monterey pine from California to New Zealand can in no wise have effected the hereditary tend- encies of the tree. Whatever capacities for growth and timber-production are revealed by the tree in New Zealand must have existed as potential qual- ities in the seed that was taken to New Zealand from California. The change has not been brought about from hybridization or by selective breed- ing. It is merely that a new environment—new [2]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33628427_0004.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
