il ffeil | ee | | | | | | | : | [ | | El bl od oe - , aie J th NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE The improved amaryllis, with blossoms nearly a foot across and of great brilliancy NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE AN AUTHORITATIVE ACCOUNT OF DHE LIE: AND WORK OF LUTHER BURBANK BY W. S. HARWOOD SEOOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED dew Work THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Lrtp. 1907 All rights reserved VLisRARY of CONGRESS P {wo Googles Recelved | © ocT 47 1907 Copyright E 1 Oct 17 1907 GLASSAA ss KKe., No /EFSLO COPY 6. Copyright, 1905, 1907 By The Macmillan Company Published September, 1905 Second Edition, September, 1907 < a ‘ MMount Pleasant wress ay, J. Horace McFarland Company x 5 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Co Ip Wife PREFACE i Reap preparation of this volume has been a work of particular pleasure: First, because of the unusual interest which has centered in the development of the material, material which takes its rise in primal places and flows in a broad stream outward; and, second, and paramount, it has been a pleasure because of the contact it has brought with the man whose life and achievements it can but inadequately portray. When the demands of his great work have been most exacting, he has never shrunk from giving still more of his strength to the illumi- nation of obscure points; when the work has worn upon him so that it has taxed his energies to the utmost, while care sought out the strings of his nerves to play sharp discords upon them, he has never failed in patience or Vii PREFACE yielded to the irritation that must have swept a lesser man off his feet. For the unfailing courtesy, for the superb thoughtfulness, for the rare gift of clarity of speech,—for all these, and far more, I am under obligation to the man about whom this book is written. If it shall be an exposition of his great work which shall bring pleasure and possibly some measure of profit to those who read, and, beyond, if it shall point the way to a still wider extension of the work of which Luther Burbank is so conspicuous a pioneer and leader, I shall indeed be glad. W. S. H. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION HREE points may be noted in the pre- sentation of this new and revised edition of “New Creations in Plant Life,” which has passed through various printings during the period since the volume was issued a year and a half ago. First, the statements in this volume, both those which have a scientific and those which have a practical bearing, stand unreservedly vouched for by Mr. Burbank. Second, the interest in the man and his work has steadily heightened since the book was first issued, and a clearer and more intel- ligent appreciation of his great powers has been manifest. The interest has been shown not only in the practical features but in the scientific as well. The more closely his work 1x PREFACE has been scanned by those who have been both competent and fair, the more com- manding it has appeared in its scientific and economic value. Third, a still closer study of the work dur- ing the period since the book was first issued demonstrates that this is one of the greatest constructive enterprises ever established among men. It is beyond the sweep of gigantic cor- poration projects, for, while from their de- velopment vast good may come, the tempta- tion to misuse enormous powers and to sow corruption is so overmastering that that which must be the active principle in all true prog- ress, the constructive, is liable to be overborne by that which blocks all progress, the destruc- tive. With Mr. Burbank, notably in such instances as that of the development of the new cactus fully considered later, everything is constructive, everything is planned for the permanent good of man through all generations. To those, and they are very many, who have written in print and in private with such x PREFACE cordial and generous appreciation of the book, my most hearty thanks are due. To those few who have criticized without adequate know]l- edge I may only express the sincere hope that they may let themselves come to a fuller understanding of the man and his work, and thus be enabled to see that that which they may honestly have thought too high praise was, indeed, but a conservative appreciation; for he who deals with the life-work of Luther Burbank deals with that which is unique among the enterprises of the age, and of a noble and unparalleled scope. WS; H. Los Garos, CaLirornia. CHAPTER I. 10 TABLE OF CONTENTS Luther Burbank, the Man . General Methods of Work . The Creation of New ‘Trees The Amaryllis and the Poppy The Potato and the Pomato The Lilies Plums and Prunes The Shasta Daisy The Thornless Edible Cactus Certain General Features Breeding for Perfume Hardening and Adaptation On the Origin of New Species How May I Do It, Too;—Breeding . How May I Do It, Too;—Grafting . Commercial Aspects of the Work xili CHAPTER XVII. XVIII. XIX. XXI. SCX. XXIII. XXIV. TABLE OF CONTENTS The Carnegie Institution Grant . A Day With Mr. Burbank His Personality . : ° The Plan Books Theories and Conclusions . ° His Place in the World . . The New Opuntias The New Work xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING The improved amaryllis, with blossoms nearly a foot across and of great brilliancy . - . Frontispiece Luther Burbank Twenty thousand new varieties of plums in process of development Walnut-leaf variation. To the left, the common English wal- nut; to the right, the native California black walnut; in the center, the new hybrid ‘‘ Paradox,” bred from the other two One of the hybrid chestnuts, bearing nuts at eighteen months of age from the seed ; ; : A bed of the hybrid poppies The central poppy, a brilliant scarlet with purple center, is the offspring of the other two. The one to the left, Papaver pilosum, a delicate orange ; the one to the right, Papaver somniferum, the ‘Bride poppy,” a pure white. Leaves of each are shown Wild Arizona potatoes used in breeding, to give strength and hardiness to the common potato ; : Potatoes growing upon a tomato vine after grafting upon the potato root Aérial potatoes growing upon a potato cion grafted upon a tomato plant XV PAGE 36 dl 74 96 101 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE A rare two-petaled hybrid seedling lily : : = 108 The development of the plum. The two larger ones are seedlings of the other two c : : eS The giant plum, not only of largest size but of great richness and prolific in bearing. . : 5 5) WAS One of many rows of seedling Shasta daisies from which selection is being made. The rows are seven hundred feet long . - - : c 5 se ls3 One of the ‘‘Shasta” daisies. The blossoms are from four to six inches in diameter 5 2 5 - 140 The cactus in the foreground is the ordinary thorny kind. Those in the rear are the thornless ones of the same species : : - ‘ 5 . 47 Cactus tests.—Tornless, hybrid seedling Opuntias, now eight weeks old from seed. They will be transplanted later, after rigid selection : ; c : = Lot What the thornless cactus will displace—A hint of desert conditions . . “ : : c - 154 One of Mr. Burbank’s rare roses 2 - : cu lléifs) The pineapple quince, a greatly improved variety having the flavor of the pineapple. : : ; Se eLell A bed of the new fragrant dahlias. é : 7 iG The plumcot, created from the plum and the apricot. A rare new fruit : é - “ 3 - 208 The ‘*Climax,” one of the rarest plums produced. . 208 The Phenomenal berry, a new species of great size and rich- ness. Individual berries are sometimes nearly three inches long , : : : : - 213 Variation in hybrid poppy leaves. Out of two thousand plants no two were alike . . 0 c - 220 Xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE An outfit for an amateur breeder 932 The ‘‘Burbank” and ‘* Tarrytown” cannas under test at Santa Rosa, where they originated 945 Showing method of grafting 252 Upper part of a tree bearing many grafts. As many as five hundred fruits are grown upon a single tree at once, no two exactly alike . 261 The essentials for amateur grafting 268 The sugar prune,—larger, sweeter, earlier and more pro- ductive than the older prunes Q77 The re-created wild onion flower, Brodiwa capitata, changed from a deep purple to purest white and greatly increased in size 280 On the proving grounds at Sebastopol. Pampas grass in the center, various bulbous plants in the foreground 284 Mr. Burbank pollinating the blossoms of a plum tree 291 The original Burbank plum tree. Millions of trees have been grown from it : 296 Cultivating the mammoth pieplant. Some leaves are three to four feet across. Mr. Burbank is the central figure 302 Mr. Burbank’s home, at Santa Rosa, California 308 General view of the proving grounds at Sebastopol, show- ing many thousands of plants under test 327 The improved everlasting flower to be used in millinery 330 Leaves of blackberry hybrid, all grown from seed of one plant, showing the remarkable variation 344 One of the few double hybrid clematises ; 5 =P a00 XVli | LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING One of the new Opuntias, four years old, eight feet high, bearing over four hundred pounds of fruit. Half of one leaf put in the ground in April produced over sixty leaves by the middle of September : An illustration of the prolific nature of the new Opuntias,— thirty-two fruits growing upon a single leaf Thousands of tender cactus seedlings just out of the ground, overtaken, but uninjured, by a severe snow-storm,—a proof of their hardiness The Gold plum, first Japanese-American hybrid ai a rare fruit c : é 2 The large plum to the right is the result of a cross between the wild American beach plum, at the left, and a Japa- nese plum. The new plum is much larger than here shown and twice as large as the Japanese parent A field of the new crimson poppy, the native California golden poppy, which Mr. Burbank changed from yellow to red : : ‘ : : To the left, the leaf of a wild geranium as Mr. Burbank found it; to the right, the leaf as he left it after years of selection for greater beauty. The single leaf shows the change even more markedly . Two seedling walnuts, of the same age, from nuts of the same tree, having had precisely the same care; a strik- ing illustration of unevenness in plant growth and of the importance of selection A cactus blossom : : é ; : XVIil PAGE 407 410 ° 416 Luther Burbank New Creations in Plant Life CHAPTER I LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN UTHER BURBANK, of whose life, achievements and methods this book is to treat, is the foremost plant-breeder in the world. Over two thousand five hundred dis- tinct species are in the list of the plants upon which he has worked, embracing a large and comprehensive field of operations. He has also produced more new forms of plant life than any other man, and has exerted a unique and powerful influence. These new forms of plant life may be brought into two classes,—those which have added to the wealth of nations and enriched the dietary of the race,—as new and improved nuts, fruits and vegetables; and those which have made the world more beautiful,—the new and improved forms of flowers. Without a university training and with only 1 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE a fundamental education upon which he has builded by wide reading, he yet leads the scientific world in the department to which he has given his life. He has suffered as few men suffer, not only from actual physical want and privation but from the unjust criti- cism of those who did not comprehend; but he has preserved through it all an unshaken confidence in the ultimate triumph of all good forces in human life. He has been engaged in a line of work so novel and so profitable he could easily have built up a fortune, yet he has subjected himself all his life to the most rigid self-denial and sacrifice in order that every energy and every resource might be devoted to the betterment of the world. Luther Burbank was born in the town of Lancaster, Massachusetts, not far from the city of Boston, on the 7th of March, 1849. Two controlling streams met in the forming of the main current of his life. From his father, a cultivated man of English extraction, came an intense love for books; from his mother, whose ancestry was Scotch, an ardent love for all beautiful forms of life. These two hereditary influences have been at work all 2 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN through his life,—the one broadening, the other deepening his nature. T'rom the earliest childhood he was passion- ately devoted to flowers and to all forms of plant life. Very many incidents are related illustrative of this. His mother and sisters had noticed that whenever he was given a flower, while lying in his cradle, he always held it with a certain childish tenderness, never crushing nor dropping it but keeping it, if allowed, until its bloom was faded or its fra- grance gone. One day when his sister had given him a flower he held it in his tiny fin- gers with his usual earnestness until a petal fell off. Then, with infinite childish patience, he strove to put the petal back in place and thus restore the flower. When a little older and able to walk, he often chose plants for pets instead of animals. He was given a plant in a pot, a so-called lobster cactus as the variety of cactus was locally known, and for hours at a time he trudged about house and yard carrying the cactus plant in his little arms. One day he stumbled and fell, broke the plant from its stem and destroyed the pot. It was a day of great sadness, for he 3 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE was as inconsolable in his grief over the loss of the pet plant as another child would have been over the death of a bird or a faithful dog. Strangely enough, a half century later, in the prime of his manhood, he has given years of his life to the study of other forms of this pet of his childhood days, creating a series of thornless and bristleless cacti, forming a vast reservoir of food for man and for un- counted millions of the beasts of the field, and paving the way for the reclamation of the desert places of the earth. That which was once a dangerous foe of man and beast be- comes, through him, a stanch friend;—it is a noble boon to the race. Year by year, as he grew into boyhood, his love for all the beautiful things in the world around him steadily deepened. As soon as he was old enough to be placed in school, he at once attracted the attention of his teachers by his love for study. The love for his school and the love for the flowers and the trees and the birds were always manifest. And in the ripe days of his prime one may see him turn with boyish eagerness from the discussion of some 4 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN deep problem of human life to listen to the note of a lark in the sky. By the time he had reached the age of twelve he had come to a knowledge of the outward forms of nature such as few lads ever attain at such an age. All the books he could command bearing upon any phase of science or nature he read and reread. The habit thus acquired has lasted. He may not be able to tell you the plot of the latest novel, but be sure he will be able to talk with you about the latest discovery of the scientists and to dissect their conclusions with consummate art. I can in no way better illustrate the trend of the lad’s mind at that time than to say that in his maturer years the author which he has read most and which he quotes more often than any other is Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a lad, he was not indifferent to the sports of other children, and entered heartily into many of them, though there was ever a greater fascination for him in the open page of a book than in rod or gun or ball. And great- est of all was the fascination of the naturai world opening to him as it opens to the heart of a poet. NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE In the town of Lancaster there was a well- equipped academy to which he was drawn as soon as he had finished the common school. This he attended during the winter for several seasons, spending the rest of the year in work. The town had a large and well-stocked library, and into this, and into his father’s few but care- fully chosen books, he delved whenever there was opportunity. His father and his father’s brother, a minister, were personal friends of Emerson. The uncle’s son, the boy’s cousin, considerably older, was greatly interested in science and was also a personal friend of Agassiz, afterward becoming a successful edu- cator and a writer of more than local note on scientific topics, particularly geology. Be- tween the two there was a strong bond of friendship. The influence of such surround- ings had much to do in shaping the lad’s na- ture. Year by year environment forces were at work, and in them may be seen the proph- ecy of the development of this wonderful life. During several summers the boy worked in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, in a fac- tory. His wage was small and the work was hard and irksome, but he even then had his 6 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN ideals toward which he was working, and he kept on and up amidst many discouragements. He learned soon, however, that, as there were seven days in the week and as it cost him at least fifty cents a day to live, he could not get along very satisfactorily on a six-day wage of fifty cents. The bent of the boy’s mind now seemed to be toward what his relatives and friends thought was invention, but which, though it included invention in the ordinary meaning of the word, was far beyond this in scope. When still younger, he was standing one day by the side of a number of his elders who were vainly trying to put together a mower. One piece of the machinery would not fit, and, after much trying, they were giv- ing up, when the boy, rarely venturing a word of advice to an elder, stepped forward and sug- gested how the piece should go. It was put in place and the machine moved off. When asked how he knew the piece of iron belonged in that particular place, he replied eae: “Because you couldn’t put it eh else!” Studying how he might make both ends i NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE meet in the factory on his scant pay, he dis- covered a way to construct a machine which would do away with the work of at least half a dozen men. He made the invention, and his delighted employers followed with a substan- tial increase in his pay. They predicted for him, as did his friends, a brilliant future as an inventor, and all urged him to set about such a life. He has disregarded the advice of his friends in later years, as he did then; and he has never found reason for regret, even though the way he has traveled has led through pain and_ sacrifice. Day by day in the midst of the toil of the factory, unswerved from his ideals by the promise of greater pecuniary reward, the dom- inant chord in his life was always sounding, struck as it was by the supreme purpose of his soul—to make new things better than the old, to make the old ones better than they were. All through a life no less scarred with sacrifice than adorned with triumph this same chord has sounded, deeper and broader in its harmony as the years have come, but not more true in the creation of marvelous forms of plant life than in the making of a machine to quicken and 8 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN cheapen the process of manufacturing a plow. But there came a day he never forgot, a red- letter day in his calendar. He had left the factory and had begun market-gardening and seed-raising in a small way. It was far more to his taste and in direct line with the future. He had noticed that there were a good many variations in the green tops of some potatoes he was raising, and that in this particular lot there was but one which bore a seed-ball. He had already begun a close study of the charac- teristics of plants, and he at once reasoned that if this seed-ball came upon but one of all the varying plants, its product, if it should be planted, should show still greater variation. So he watched this seed-ball with unusual care. One day, to his despair, he found that the seed- ball was missing. He was about to give up the whole matter when it occurred to him he would make a search upon the ground. He found the seed-ball at last, where it had been knocked off probably by some wandering dog rushing through the garden. From it came the Burbank potato, which comparatively few people associate with Luther 9 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE Burbank, the great plant-breeder. The potato which he developed from this seed-ball has not only disproved the dictum of those who said a potato famine was at hand because of the steady deterioration of the world’s stock, but it has added to the wealth of this nation alone upwards of twenty millions of dollars. The creator of the new potato sold it to a local seedsman for $150. It was not long after this that he suffered a partial sunstroke in the broiling heat of a July day and, seeking a climate where he might be able to live an outdoor life without fear of a return attack, and where he might hope some day to put in effect some of the theories of the development of plant life already stirring in his brain, he started for California, with a slender purse and ten of his new potatoes. He reached California in 1875, and went north from San Francisco some fifty miles to an unimproved valley lying between two spurs of the Coast Range Mountains, today a rich fruit and farming country. He was then twenty-five years of age, slen- der, not over-strong, and yet possessed of much vitality and endurance. These latter he 10 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN was soon called upon to put to test. The country was new, and the few ranchers and farmers had not yet begun to realize the pos- sibilities. of their region in the way of fruit culture. He sought for work, that he might get ahead enough to make a start as a nur- seryman. He saw the possibilities of the country in this line and the promise of a good living, and perhaps a competence if he could only get established. But work was not easy to get. Day after day he sought it and failed, and day by day his slender store of money ran down. He did all sorts of odd jobs, many of them far beyond his strength. He heard of a new building to be put up in the frontier town. He applied for work. He had no tools, but, being promised a job if he had a shing- ling hatchet, he invested nearly all of his remaining funds in one, only to find, the next morning, that the job had gone to some one else. He found more steady work at last at a mere pittance, cleaning out chicken-coops on a chicken-ranch. The work was disagreeable in the extreme, but he was willing to do any- thing that was honorable. At this time he ll NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE had no place to sleep nights, and for months made his bed in a chicken-coop, unable to get enough money ahead to pay for regular lodg- ings. Occasionally, when work altogether failed, he was reduced to absolute want. It was his habit at such times to go to the village meat market, secure the refuse bones saved for dogs, and get from them what meat he could. He found steady employment at last in a small nursery at a beggarly wage. Not being able to hire lodgings, he slept in a bare, damp, unwholesome room above the steaming hot- house, where for days and nights at a time his clothing was never dry. He was passing through such privations as those through which, in the strange allotments of fortune, many another great man has passed. The constant exposure and lack of nourish- ing food made rapid inroads upon a not too strong constitution, and this, with overwork, brought on an attack of fever. A woman in the neighborhood, herself in straitened cir- cumstances, found him one day in such a criti- cal condition that she insisted on sharing with him the small portion of milk which she could afford to spare from the one cow that supplied 12 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN her family. He protested against taking it because he might never be able to repay her, and, indeed, there was scant hope in_ his condition that he would live to do it. The woman insisted, and the pint of milk a day which she brought to him saved his life. The man who was to become the foremost figure in the world in his line of life, and who was to pave the way by his own discoveries and creations for others of all lands to follow in his footsteps, was a stranger in a strange land, close to starvation, penniless, beset by disease, hard by the gates of death. And yet never for an instant did this heroic figure lose hope, never did he abandon confidence in him- self, not once did he swerve from the path he had marked out. In the midst of all he kept an unshaken faith. He accepted the trials that came, not as a matter of course, not tamely, nor with any mock heroics, but as a passing necessity. His resolution was of iron, his will of steel, his heart of gold; he was fighting in the splendid armor of a clean life. It was a wan and haggard figure that rose at last from his sick bed and wandered from place to place in search of work. Matters 13 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE shaped themselves gradually, more and more in his favor and he went from one odd job to another, slowly saving a little money and regaining his health. The day came at last when he had a bit of a balance in the bank and soon after he was able in a small way to set up in business for himself. He secured a small plot of ground and established the nursery which was to become famous throughout not only his own state but the country at large. His heart was in his work now, but there was something else. All through these years of early manhood, in the midst of discouragement and privation, he never let go of the plan of his life—to become not merely a raiser of plants but an improver and a creator. Even in those first days, as chance offered, he began that wonderful series of experiments which has astonished the scien- tific men of two hemispheres and established an epoch in the life of the vegetable kingdom from which the future will reckon. One day there came to the young nursery- man an order in the filling of which he dis- played that boldness of plan and audacity of execution which have many a time marked his 14 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN progress. The order was from a man who was going to start a large prune ranch. He wanted twenty thousand young prune trees to set out. It would take in the ordinary course of events from two and a half to three years for a nur- seryman to raise the trees, but this was a hurry-up order; if it was to be filled, it must be filled in nine months. He took the order. With all haste he scoured the country for men and boys to plant almonds. It was late in the season and the almond seed was the only one which would sprout at that time among all the trees that were suitable for his plans. It grows very rapidly, too, and this was taken into account. In a comparatively short time the young shoots were big enough for budding. ‘Twenty thou- sand prune buds were in readiness, were bud- ded into the growing almonds, and the young trees started forward in their race for the prize. When the nine months were up the twenty thousand prune trees were ready. Nature had been outwitted, or, better put, had been led to outdo herself; the fruit-grower was delighted ; the young nurseryman was a good many dol- lars in pocket. Today, twenty years afterward, 15 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE one of the finest prune orchards in California or the world is growing from these trees. It was a concrete illustration of the re- sourcefulness of the man and of that which has again and again been shown in his later life, his supreme indifference to precedent. He early established an unvarying rule, never to send out anything which was not, so far as lay in his power, precisely what it was represented to be. So his name became a synonym for exact honesty,—if it came from Burbank, it was to be depended upon. An incident well illustrates the confidence men had in him when once they came to know him. He was in need of some extra money to use in carrying forward a branch of his work. He had applied for a loan unsuccessfully at quite a number of places. His very modesty and shrinkingness, in the eyes of a business man, stood against him. One day, when he had given up hope of the loan, he saw a team of horses in the distance coming down the dusty road. As the team drew near he recognized a man who lived in the region, by common repu- tation a miserable old skinflint. Hailing from the road as he drove up, he called out; 16 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN “Say, young feller, ’'ve been watchin’ you a long time. Yourre allus attendin’ to bizness. But a man that kin do what you kin do oughter have an easier time than you're havin’. Don’t you need a little extry cash once in a while?” Greatly interested in such a query from such a man, he answered that he could use a little additional money now and then,—in fact, he knew where he could put a hundred dollars that very day, in a place where it would bring in a handsome return. Pulling out an old wallet, the so-called skin- flint counted out two hundred dollars and handed them to the astonished nurseryman. “No,” as he drove off, “I don’t want no note, nor no intrust nuther: when you git ready to pay it, all right. G’long, there!” The years now rapidly passed. The business began to yield more handsomely, and yet he was less and less satisfied with the outlook. In the midst of the exacting demands of his work, he yet found time to devote to experi- mentation with new forms of plant life,— always before him the supreme purpose of his life. Reticent by nature, though never secre- tive, he did not talk over his new ideas with 17 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE any one. No one was to know what he was engaged in until such time as he had some- thing to show for it. As he had opportunity, he read such few practical books on botany and the breeding of plants as he could find, but these, save in some matters of nomenclature and detail, were of little aid to him. He soon found out that he stood face to face with Nature, and only from her lips could he learn her secrets. He read Darwin among other scientists, and was greatly interested in the Origin of Species. In his own mind were developing, at the same time, important theories, which must be noted in a later chapter. Even as he worked the hardest, and all unknown to him- self in large measure, his own mind was being broadened and deepened. He saw before him now something of the possibilities of plant creation—his vision was strong and true, his perspective never distorted. There came another red-letter day in his calendar. It was the day when he came to the formal decision that he would give up his nursery business and devote his entire time and energies to plant-breeding. As soon as his 18 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN relatives and friends heard of his decision, they entered vehement protest. What greater folh could a man commit than to abandon a busi- ness now netting him nearly ten thousand dollars a year to embark upon a project at the best Quixotic and sure to end in financial ruin? It was the same sort of reasoning he had listened to when a boy, when his friends and relatives pictured a great career as an inventor. Ridicule, pity, scorn, harsh criticism, all were alike unavailing. He listened with pa- tience, but went forward in the line he had marked out. So one day in the year 1893 he found himself free from the exacting demands of his business life, his extensive nursery closed out. He had entered upon a career which was to be even more exacting than this business life, but he entered upon it high in hope and rich in resolution. Slowly he put into effect his plans. Having tested a new fruit or flower or an improved old one, he kept it back, following in his old lines as a nurseryman, until he was absolutely sure it was going to do precisely what he said it would do. Not until then was he ready to 19 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE put a new creation before the world. The new and improved varieties were sold to bring him revenue for the further prosecution of his work. The sums for which they sold were ridiculously small, considering the time con- sumed in their production, often years of the most patient study and experimentation, and the large revenues that were derived from the new creations by the dealers purchasing them. Perhaps from one hundred dollars, at the start, up to five hundred would be an average. Or- ders soon began coming from Europe, where he gradually became better known, where. indeed, he was appreciated as he had never been in his own country. His income rose steadily, but it did not match his outlay. There were laborers’ wages to pay, supplies to be bought, funds provided for paying for the services of collectors in for- eign lands, on the lookout for new kinds of plants. His reputation was advancing, but year by year he was falling behind and en- croaching more and more upon the store set by for the rainy day. Opposition now came from many quarters. Not only did his friends see the fulfilment of 20 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN their predictions,—some of them very kindly telling him so,—but people who had heard of some of the strange things he had done, and who had not the breadth of vision to see what manner of man this was, pronounced him a charlatan,—a man who was creating all manner of unnatural forms of life, monstrosities, in- deed a distinct foe to the race. A minister in- vited Mr. Burbank to listen to a sermon on his work, and when the guest was in the pew denounced him in bitter fashion as a man who was working in direct opposition to the will of God, in thus creating new forms of life which never should have been created, or if created, only by God himself. Now and again arose some pseudo-scientific man who, professing unlimited friendship, sought for means to filch the rapidly increasing reputation. Others visited him with the cov- ert purpose of exposing him as a charlatan after inspecting his methods, but, confounded by what they saw, went down the little hedge- bordered walk that leads to his quiet home shamed into silence. From various sources came offers of aid; but the keen vision of the man read every proposition in its spirit as well 21 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE as its letter and detected unerringly the efforts which, while apparently in his behalf, were in reality essentially selfish, planned so that others might profit by his experiences. There were strings to them; he would have none of them. He could divide responsibility, and apportion duty, but he could not yield authority. It would be fatal to have any other will than his own in command. But he was learning now that, to accomplish the work he had mapped out, and so to leave it that others could take it up where he left it and carry it forward, it was imperative that he have assistance. Already many millions of dollars had been added to the national wealth because of his improved fruits. Already the whole world was being brightened by his flowers. And yet, if he should be able to work without handicap, the future promised far greater results than the past. Now and again, too, he was bitterly admonished that he could not work eighteen hours out of the twenty- four. Occasional illnesses came. He found that the nature he loved so well could chide as well as cheer. Several times he was laid by with dangerous nervous breakdowns. 22 LUTHER BURBANK, THE MAN At this point a plan was unfolded to him, considered somewhat at length in a later chap- ter, for substantial assistance from the Car- negie Institution in a manner which would leave him absolutely his own master and would enable that organization to become a silent partner in the furtherance of his plans. Thus the way opened to a maximum of effort at a mimimum of waste. 23 CHAPTER II GENERAL METHODS OF WORK A Betas passing to the individual crea- tions of Mr. Burbank, it will be of inter- est to consider the general plan of his life- work, reserving for later chapters the minutize of the methods, so presented and so fortified by advice from Mr. Burbank that the ama- teur, no less than the professional, may receive suggestions for the prosecution of plant-breed- ing, one of the most fascinating occupations in the world, and one full of great practical possibilities. Indeed, as Mr. Burbank puts it, results of enormous value to the race may at any time come from the work of any man who takes up plant-breeding with patience and intelligent interest. The aim of Mr. Burbank, aside from that paramount object always overshadowing all else, to give aid to the race, is threefold: 1. The improvement of old varieties of fruits, flowers, grasses. trees and vegetables. 24 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK 2. The merging of wild, or degenerate, types of plant life with tame, or cultivated ones, in order that the union may be of service to both. 3. The creation of absolutely new forms of life, unknown to the world before,—the highest act of the plant-breeder. The general character of his work is in- cluded under two heads: 1. Breeding.—This, in its basic meaning, consists in uniting two plants to give birth to a third. A thousand and one things must be taken into account, all accumulating through hereditary influences and environment, and reaching out through all the future life of the plant; but, for present consideration, the chief act is parental. Breeding is accomplished by sifting the pollen of one plant upon the stigma of another, this act, pollenation, resulting in fertilization, Nature, in her own mysterious ways, bringing forth the new plant. 2. Selection.—This consists in eternally choosing the best and rejecting the worst. It is co-equal in importance with breeding, the one supplementary to the other at all points. The breeding of plants is not a new art. 25 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE Generally speaking, however, those who have carried it on have worked in small quarters, perhaps in gardens or conservatories, usually with comparatively few varieties. Mr. Bur- bank early saw that this was slow work, that it would take the years of many lifetimes to accomplish what he had laid out before him. The sending of telegrams was once confined to a single message, one way, in one direction. Even this was a wonderful thing, but it was slow, and so there was devised a system of sending many messages upon the single wire in both directions at the same time. Some such transformation as this he has wrought in plant-breeding. Instead of one or two experiments under way at the same time, he may have five hun- dred at once, all requiring constant supervi- sion, many of them extending over a period of perhaps ten years before they come to frui- tion. Instead of having a few square feet of ground or a few pots under glass, he uses acres of ground, if necessary, in a single test. In place of contenting himself with a half dozen, or even fifty plants, in making a given test, he uses if necessary a million, all of them 26 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK pressing forward in a million similar ways, toward the same end. And out of the million he saves perhaps in the last sifting but one, and that one the best of all. Running through all the work is the con- stant effort to break up old habits of life. Mr. Burbank sees two plants of the same, or it may be widely differing, species. He sees that neither one is living up to its opportunities. For one reason or another they may have made no perceptible progress, possibly for centuries; or else it may be they have been as slowly going upward from some _ poorer estate and have not had sufficient help. He knows that back of each one of these plants lies a long and varied history, full of incidents, replete in experiences as strange in their way and as sabtle as any which come to man. This past of the plant has produced the plant of today—tomorrow it must be changed. Just as into the life of a man long inured to bad habits, the son of evil parents, tracing his lineage backward through a century of sin, just as there must come into this life some tremendous shock, be it a death, a terror, a great love or an overpowering hate, completely 27 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE changing the course of his life and making an abrupt break in the generations of crime, so in a gentler but none the less powerful manner the plant must have the overpowering shock of re-creation, it must irrevocably break with the past. As in the case of the man, so with the flower. The initial shock and subsequent change may be followed by a reaction and a return in some measure to the old order of things; but just as care and patience and wise living and the higher aid may help the man back and steady him in a course of right living, so the plant, though it rebel at first, finally becomes fixed in its new ways and _ starts forward to enrich or glorify the world. The very least of Mr. Burbank’s labor is the actual breaking up of the plant’s life by the shock of re-creation, the vastest in its scope that a life can bear, such shock as even death does not bring, for it is death and life in one, the death of the old and the birth of the new. But this, however grave a change, is only an incident in the work. He must study the plant in all its relations. He must know its past intimately. He must take into account ten thousand past tendencies. He must look 28 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK to the future of the new plant and see in what manner it is to fill out its new place in the world among its fellows and amidst perhaps radically different environments. These plants are like children. To know them you must know their ancestry ; and to know their ances- try affords at least some hint of their future. In a plant, this past, this heredity which Mr. Burbank, more clearly than it was- ever set forth before, pronounces “the sum of all past environments,” is perhaps more fixed than that of achild’s past, because it has not had so many obvious disturbances. It has not been subject to the inconsistencies of human love and its strange selections. This knowledge of the past of the plant and this intimate study of its life and the related life of other plants are among the factors which help to give Mr. Burbank the commanding place he holds in the world. When the past of the plant has been broken up, then comes the turning of its life forces into its new channels. Indeed, when we begin to search for the secret of Mr. Burbank’s success, we find that it lies deep, and sweeps forward with a powerful hold upon the very sources of life itself. Perhaps the flower he is 29 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE for the time considering has had a small, insig- nificant blossom all its life, all the life, anyway, that is recorded by man. Its life tendencies have centered and culminated, so to speak, in this pitifully inadequate bloom. The blossom is not only small and unattractive in form but weak in color, hard by the realm of the outcast weeds. But he has seen in it great possibil- ities; swiftly he sets about its improvement. Possibly he sees that by combining it with some near related flower friend he may make it lovelier, perhaps he decides that the only way to do is to pick out the very best of its kind from among a thousand or ten thousand plants and from this best one, poor though it may be, go on and on in a constant succession of upward selections from the plants that follow the seeding, until at last he brings forth the blossom he sought, beautiful, large, richer in color, fine and velvety in texture, a royal addition to the blossoms of the world. It takes long to do this,—perhaps twenty years. T'wenty years to produce a new flower? Certainly, why not? Is it not worth it? Not that he may spend his whole time for that term on a single plant,—a whole series of them 30 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK is in process of development at once, hundreds of varieties. But it is years in almost every case before the end is reached,—so slow the work of selection from year to year, this eter- nal choosing of the best plants from the best. And there are many obstacles. When two plants are united to produce a third, no human intelligence can predict just what will follow. You have in the hollow of your hand a dozen seeds from one of your choicest apples. It had reddened in the autumn sun on a tree you had known since boyhood. You had watched it blossom in pink beauty in the springtime of other years, had seen its fruit develop in the mellowing summer, had watched its bare branches tossed in the gale when the winter snows lay deep at its feet. Here in your hand lie the seeds of this apple. It may be you are a thousand miles away from the old home where the apple tree is growing. It would be a rare delight for you, transplanted to another region, and for your children after you, to raise another tree from the seeds of the old friend. So you plant your twelve seeds to rear on a new soil the old friend, and not one of them comes into a life in any particular like the 31 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE life of the old tree at home—indeed, it may turn out not one of them bears fruit fit for the tongue. So it may be with a new life from cross-bred- ing and selection,—the end cannot always be foretold. But Mr. Burbank does not content himself with the use of two or three plants as stock, taking chances on their failure to make progress. Many men have used a few plants and have found certain results following, and now and again has arisen one who, from his few experiments, has reached certain results which entitle his deductions, he believes, to be known thereafter as laws. Mr. Burbank has never worked in this way. He early saw that to carry on his plans in the broadest and _ best manner, to avoid the delays incident to a failure of a single plant to show improvement, he must work with thousands where necessary, indeed, with tens of thousands; indeed, more than this, with a million plants if needs be. For example, in breeding lilies he has used as high as five hundred thousand plants in a single test. Out of this enormous number there naturally were great variations, and so before his eyes spread out a vast panorama, 32 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK rich in varied opportunities for initial selec- tion. Out of this initial selection he makes final choice of the best. Sometimes he has marked out a certain line of life for a flower. He has bred and se- lected to that end. For a time all goes as he had planned, but suddenly a new trait de- velops, something which completely throws all former plans out of gear. He does not aban- don the test, but watches with the intensest interest the new development. If the plant persists in its way,—and the new way is better,— he leaves the old and follows the new. No man is quicker to give up, when convinced that giving up is best. But he is not con- vinced easily ;—the evidence against him must be unanswerable. Now and then out of the muck of some slum, reeking with moral filth, and developing with unwholesome rapidity the seeds of anarchy and crime, a white, pure life springs up, persists, maintains its guard against all temptations, comes back, mayhap, in later years to help redeem its birthplace. And so ina similar way a flower sometimes breaks away from the line of life all logic and reason would say it should follow. 33 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE The new plant may develop certain charac- teristics like those of one parent, certain others like those of the other parent. It may inherit length of stem from one, breadth of leaf from the other, or it may have stem and leaf wholly unlike either. And this latter is frequently the end sought,—to produce a different type from that of either and from that produce by long selection a type superior to either parent. Very much of breeding is breaking up. I recall with interest a conversation with a gentleman in the city of London concerning the terrible depravity among the young men of that city. There were at that time fully eight hundred thousand young men in the city between the ages of eighteen and twenty- five. He was perhaps better acquainted with the youth of the greatest city in the world than any other man in it. He said, as the re- sult of his years of experience, that, but for the inflow of country blood into the veins of London, London life would become practi- cally extinct in three generations,—so vast the vice. Just as this, and all other great cities, are strengthened physically, mentally and, indeed, o4 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK morally, by the influence of those who are born and reared in country places, so, many times, a plant which has long lived in a care- less civilization having lost its vitality, needs a new infusion of blood. Mr. Burbank has ever been a close student of all the outward forms of nature, as well as of all her strange inner life. All through all the years he has been working upon the flowers and plants he has found in the open, using them frequently for this very purpose to strengthen the strain of some over- civilized plant needing the fresh impulse of the wild, strong neighbor of the mountains or forest. Collectors in all quarters of the world, too, are steadily on the lookout to provide him with plant life from their re- gions, sometimes wild, sometimes tame, with which to make combinations or developments. So he is confined to no one species nor to any one line of combinations. The whole world is his field, and he makes his selections and forms his combinations in absolute dis- regard of all precedent. The end in view is the point, how to reach it most directly. It may be along so-called scientific lines, it may be in absolutely new and original paths,— 39 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE more likely the latter,— but the means are the non-essentials, the end is paramount. It will be seen that in order to accomplish the results that are changing in many ways the plant life of the world and opening the way to still greater changes, something else must enter into the matter than mere observa- tion, however keen, than knowledge, however deep, than experience, however broad. And this strange, intangible thing, for want of a better term, we call intuition. There comes a day each year in Mr. Bur- bank’s work when the fruit trees under test, for example, must come up for scrutiny. Selection is to be put to one of its uses. Selection, selection of the best, must be ever operative from the time the plant is first chosen from its fellows;—it is the continual survival of the fittest; but now comes selec- tion on a larger scale. Perhaps there are a hundred thousand of these fruit trees one or two years of age. They have been planted at Mr. Burbank’s proving grounds at Sebastopol, a few miles from his home in Santa Rosa. They have been cared for with patience and with trained minds working over them, and 36 quauidoyaaap jo ssavoad ur sumyd jo soyomea Mou pursnoyy Ayuda T, f Rea! a y) r ie : ‘A GENERAL METHODS OF WORK now has come their crucial test: each one must pass in review before the eye of their master. In the ordinary course of plant-breeding each one of these hundred thousand plants would need to be grafted, or budded, each one would need individual care. It would require at least five years before the final test would come and a showing be made of the value, or the worthlessness, of each particular tree. While no such test in a single experiment has ever been made, it may be stated in general terms that to graft and carry through to the end of the five-year period a hundred thousand trees would involve an outlay in actual money, and in rental value of the large area of ground necessary at least ten dollars per tree—a total of one million dollars. This is saved by Mr. Burbank in one work- ing day. It is saved by that faculty which is best expressed by the term intuition. With assistants to bring and carry away the tiny slender trees, perhaps now grown to a height of one to three feet, he passes upon the hundred thousand in a single day, going over them with lightning-like rapidity, challenging 37 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE them the instant they meet his eye, determin- ing instantly whether or not they are fit to live. This is selection in one of its most im- portant forms and carried on as it never has been carried on before. Instantly he detects faults and as quickly determines excellencies. How does he do it? How does a child know enough to shun an evil man? How does a maiden know whether the man setting siege to her heart is to be trusted with her life? How does a man of sensitive fiber know instantly, without word or sign, that his traveling companion is a cut- ' throat by nature, whether or not he wear a bandit’s garb? Mr. Burbank decides upon his trees by in- tuition. He puts a case this way: You may meet a hundred men, a thousand, or even ten thousand men upon the street of a great city, and instantly, without taking into account any particular feature, you know that they are different. No matter how similar in general, the line of difference is absolute. A hundred men pass before a merchant seeking a man for a position of trust—he can tell at a glance and with seldom an error whether or 38 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK not he is going to want any one of them. He does not know how—he simply utilizes his intuition; and Mr. Burbank ean tell his trees with even greater accuracy. One day a loyal friend laughingly suggested a test. He was not in doubt as to Mr. Bur- bank’s word, but he would like visual demon- stration. So a series of trees was passed before Mr. Burbank in the usual way. These he instantly separated into good, mediocre and poor. They were all grafted or budded in the usual way and then, after several years, when the time for final test came, the results showed that, in every instance, he had decided the precise nature of the tree and its relative value. When the long period of a given test has been concluded, the rejected plants, shrubs or trees are gathered in large bonfires and burned, and the ground stands clear for an- other test. In a single year as many as four- teen of these huge bonfires have been lighted upon the hills of Sebastopol, consuming hundreds of thousands of plants. And out of all that entered the test, probably not more than one or two have been saved,—all 39 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE the rest have been rejected because they did not show improvement over old forms, because they did not promise to add anything to the beauty or the utility of the world. One plant out of five hundred thousand, all the rest destroyed, the results of all the labor of a decade ending in smoke,—no wonder the people living hard by, before they came to know what it all meant, pronounced this strange man going up and down their country lanes so gently and silently, a wild, erratic creature—indeed, more than one sagely held him bereft of all sound judgment. Before passing to a more detailed considera- tion of Mr. Burbank’s great achievements it will be of interest to note briefly some of his leading creations. The list includes: The improved thornless and spiculess edible eactus, food for man and beast, to be the reclamation of the deserts of the world; the primus-berry, a union of the raspberry and blackberry, the first recorded instance of the creation of a new species, together with the phenomenal berry created from the California dewberry and the Cuthbert raspberry, and the plumcot, the union of the plum and _ the 40 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK apricot, all three the accomplishment of what had been said to be an impossibility; a plum with no pit, one with the flavor of a Bartlett pear, one having a rare fragrance, many plums of great value, rapidly replacing older varie- ties; a walnut with a shell so thin that the birds visited the branches and destroyed the nuts, necessitating the reversion of the process to make the shell of the right thickness; a walnut bred with no tannin in its meat, the coloring matter of the skin which has a dis- agreeable taste; a tree which grows more rapidly than any other tree ever known in the temperate zones of the world; the Shasta daisy, a blossom five to seven inches in diame- ter, made out of a wild field daisy, a Japanese and an English daisy; gladioli of greatly enhanced beauty, taught to bloom around their entire stem like a hyacinth instead of the old way, on one side; a dahlia with its disagreeable odor driven out and in its place the odor of the magnolia blossom; a calla with fragrance of the Parma violet, and a scentless verbena given the intensified fragrance of the trailing arbutus; a chestnut tree which bears nuts in eighteen months from time of seed- 41 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE planting; fruit trees which will withstand freez- ing in bud and flower; a poppy so increased in size that it measures ten inches across its brilliant bloom; an amaryllis bred up from two to three inches to nearly a foot in diam- eter; a calla increased in size until it measures ten to twelve inches in breadth, and then, the process being reversed, bred down to less than two inches; the white blackberry, a rare and beautiful fruit and as toothsome as beautiful; thousands of varieties of lilies. He has greatly improved the plums, pears, apples, cherries, grapes, quinces and peaches by selection and breeding; has developed many varieties of flowers, improving them in color, hardiness and yield; and has added much to the pro- ductiveness and edibility of vegetables. Pie- plant with leaves four feet in diameter, bearing every day in the year; a prune three or four times larger than the ordinary French prune and greatly enriched; the pomato, an improve- ment on the poisonous potato ball, producing arare fruit which grows upon the top of a potato; blackberries without thorns; the im- proved Australian star flower, one of the everlasting varieties which is to be used for 42 GENERAL METHODS OF WORK the decoration of ladies’ hats; a larkspur greatly enlarged in size and given a delightful odor; many improved varieties of grasses ; improved tobacco;—these are some of the works which have come from his hand; others to yield even far more important results are now under way. To study more closely some of the won- derful achievements of this man is like opening successive doors into some strange vast castle where every apartment is the scene of a miracle. 43 CHAPTER III THE CREATION OF NEW TREES se ONG the thousands of people who visit Mr. Burbank’s home from year to year are many who come out of idle curiosity, some who are prominent in scientific lines, whom he delights to welcome if they are sincere, some who come prepared to find fault and to over- throw, if possible, what has been built up. One day when there came a man who had been deeply interested in forestry, conversa- tion fell upon the breeding of trees, the pro- duction of new and improved varieties of trees by means of cross-fertilization and selection. The visitor had decided views upon the subject, and at once raised the question of the feasibility, even of the possibility, of any suc- cessful experimentation in tree-breeding, such as that Mr. Burbank had carried on in other plant life. In the first place, the experiments would need to be carried over through a series of generations, and, so slow the growth of the 44 THE CREATION OF NEW TREES trees, the man who began them would long have been dead before anything like important results would have been attained, thus largely eliminating continuity of effort and _ satisfac- tory personal supervision. Again, what was there to be gained in attempting to improve the trees of the world as they stand? And, again, there was the improbability of anything like satisfactory results in any fertilization— the whole scheme was interesting but specula- tive. Nor was there any practical bearing,— where could there be found any scientific value in the plan? In all lines of Mr. Burbank’s work the most satisfactory answer to the arguments of those who hold that, because such and such a thing has never yet been accomplished, therefore, it cannot be accomplished, is a fact. It was so in this instance. All that was necessary to do was to point to a single row of trees standing in front of his home at Santa Rosa, just out- side the white fence that surrounds his grounds. They are noble trees, tall, wide- spreading, stately, pleasant to look upon, dig- nified and substantial as trees go, not weak or irresolute, possessing that indefinable attribute 45 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE which, even in trees, we call character. These trees answered every argument advanced. They were the result of breeding and selec- tion; they had not been long in growing, not over a dozen years; they were economically important. Some ten or fifteen years before, Mr. Bur- bank had studied the question of tree improve- ment with great care. : P ' a” \ y 7 ~ / _ i ne o : } - 7 4 a THE SHASTA DAISY never would they find another such a master as they had had. So average conditions must be taken into account, and an average best flower be made for these conditions. It is a cardinal principle of Mr. Burbank’s life never to let a plant de- ceive him by show of some surpassing excel- lence which, under ordinary conditions, would not be apt to manifest itself. “If I deceive myself,” he puts it, “I deceive the public, too.” From the medium plants the stock was grown and re-grown until he produced a flower at last combining all the desirable qualities with adaptability to average condi- tions. This flower was from three inches in diameter for the smaller ones to over six inches in diameter where conditions ap- proached the ideal. In breeding these new daisies still another attribute was constantly in mind, that of hardiness, hardiness in the growing plant, keeping qualities in the cut-flowers. So all through the tests only the sturdiest plants were kept; all the weak and sickly ones were at once destroyed. It was for this very charac- teristic of endurance that the little wild daisy, 141 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE with its tenacity of life and its ability to with- stand heat and cold, was chosen. So when the end came a flower was produced that would grow equally well inside the arctic circle and under the equator. The cut-flowers, too, will remain fresh and beautiful in water for from three to six weeks. A gift of some of his choicest stock which graced a Thanksgiving table was still beautiful at Christmas. As Mr. Burbank puts it, they will grow anywhere out-of-doors where it is not cold enough to kill an oak tree, and they will grow for anybody. They are perennial, increasing in number of blossoms from year to year. But if, at the first, the plant is left to itself it will blossom itself to death the first year. All but one or two of the first buds must be removed, and sometimes not a single one is left. Thus treated, the plants strengthen themselves and, after the first season, a single clump will bear from two hundred to five hundred of the huge white blossoms. The plants may be multi- plied indefinitely thereafter simply by dividing them at the roots. They will blossom for sev- eral months in the average temperate zone climate, in California blooming six months or 142 THE SHASTA DAISY more out of the twelve; under specially fa- vorable conditions, throughout the whole year. An extremely interesting feature of the new flower is that it seems to have lost all its bad habits. Where once it was, at the best, a pest to be dreaded, multiplying with remark- able rapidity and driving absolutely necessary food products to the wall, it now keeps itself apart from the weeds of its ancestry in a cer- tain aristocratic exclusiveness. It produces but very little seed and that large in size. Mr. Burbank has grown millions of the plants in his tests, but a self-sown daisy has never appeared upon his grounds. The flower itself is one of remarkable beauty, a rare, well-nigh brilliant white of great size, the center a pure yellow, with long, graceful stems. It is not only highly decora- tive in the mass, forming a magnificent note in garden or lawn, but it lends itself with a grace all its own to the bride at the altar or for the last tender tribute to the dead. From the first time he saw it, Mr. Burbank had always held in deep veneration Mount Shasta, a snow-capped peak of the high Sierras, one of the conspicuous landmarks of California. 143 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE As the name of the mountain means white, and as its summit is always covered with a coronal of snow, he chose the name as pecu- liarly fitting for such a flower. Now and again Mr. Burbank creates some flower or plant which to him seems practically perfect; that is to say, it is so nearly up to his ideal that he does not think it necessary or profitable to give any further time to it. Again, he leaves a flower in its class by itself, perfected as far as his hands may make it, and then fashions another from the material that was left over. The new flower may have cer- tain characteristics of the completed one, but it will have others so very different it becomes a practically individual creation. In the breed- ing of the daisy some peculiarly interesting and curious variations are developed. In cer- tain plants these variations assume what are called abnormalities, while in other cases they are irregularities,—irregular but undeniably beautiful. Certain of the hybrid daisies showed a tendency to become double, their petals in some cases also being strangely convoluted. The doubling was somewhat in the manner of the chrysanthemum. This tendency was en- 144 THE SHASTA DAISY couraged, and gradually, led onward from year to year, the petals multiplied in number, crowded closer and closer into the golden center, until, finally, a completely perfect double blossom was produced, even larger than the Shasta, entirely white. In form it suggests the chrysanthemum, though quite distinct from its Japanese friend in character and promising to become a notable rival. It differs also in length of blooming time, its period extending over five to six months in- stead of the one month of the chrysanthemum. Hundreds of flowers have passed through some such life history as this at the hands of Mr. Burbank. Some have been led in one direction, some in another, but all led upward to a more beautiful life, all glorified by his touch. Many years of his life have been crowded to the utmost with the details of what may be called utilitarian productions, forms of plant life whose chief value is to add to the wealth of nations. It would be quite impossible to say how many millions of dollars he has thus added, nor would it be in the reach of the imagination to estimate what the world is yet to reap from his sowing. 145 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE And yet, in the midst of his labor for. the practical good of the race, he has never lost sight of that more exalted resolve to leave the world a far more beautiful place than it was when he entered it. 146 The cactus in the foreground is the ordinary thorny kind. Those in the rear are the thornless ones of the same species CHAPTER IX THE THORNLESS EDIBLE CACTUS iS ees problems which confront Mr. Bur- bank in his work are many and some- times of great difficulty. One plant may present a simple nature and a comparatively short life history. Another may be exceed- ingly complex in nature and of great age. The first he finds easy of manipulation, the second often very difficult. The plants with millions of years back of them, which may be traced in the very rocks themselves, are likely to prove stubborn, to persist in their old habits; or, if they at first appear to yield, to return to these old habits at a later day. He has found this particularly true of the cactus, in the changing of which he has accomplished one of his most wonderful achievements. For years he had had _ the cactus under consideration. It had long seemed to him that it should be taken out of its environment and set forward among the 147 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE helps instead of the hindrances of the race. Sometimes he comes instantly to a conclusion, seeing immediately the bearing of things and setting out upon a certain course fortified at all points. Sometimes, as in the regeneration of the cactus, he is met with grave problems which demand profound study. When he turned to the cactus on which he was to spend more than ten years of study, it was, in the main, a stubborn, irreconcilable foe to the race; in order to make it a friend of man its whole nature must be changed; it must be re-created. To the average man it would seem a waste of time and energy to seek to improve a plant which for millions of years had been hostile to the race, which seemed to have absolutely nothing in common with civilization, which by its pariah-like nature seemed peculiarly fitted for a home upon the desert, its closest comrades the rattlesnake and the scorpion, its highest aim, apparently, to cause the death of some thirst- maddened animal driven to eat its Juicy but deadly leaves. But, the more difficult the problem, the keener his desire to solve it. He knew that 148 THE THORNLESS EDIBLE CACTUS the cactus, even in its wild and defiant shape, had certain unquestioned excellencies. It was undeniably hardy; it would grow and thrive where nothing else would, welcoming the blistering heat of the desert and growing powerful where rain seldom falls. It had much that was nutritious, both in its thick thalli, or leaves, and in its golden or crimson fruit. Wherever it had been given a chance away from its desert home and under more favor- able conditions, it had shown phenomenal thrift. It was not one of those plants which will not bear transplanting from a wild to a civilized state. Two main obstacles had first to be removed .—the countless thorns upon the cactus, cover- ing branch and leaves and fruit, and the spicules of the leaves, the woody fibrous skele- tons of the thalli which made them more or less indigestible. These overcome, there remained the development of the fruit and the fitting of the leaves to be a food, food even for man as well as beast. All this he has accomplished,— nothing more marvelous has ever been done in plant life. It would be exceedingly difficult to say 149 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE which one of Mr. Burbank’s creations is the most valuable to the world from a practical point of view, which one adds most to the wealth of nations. But probably no other creation has surpassed this one, for it provides for the sustenance of the race, food for man and food for beast; it utilizes the vast desert areas of the world without the intervention of irrigation, though irrigation will aid here as elsewhere; it converts enormous reaches of semi-arable land in all zones to profitable husbandry. It had long been known that there were certain kinds of cactus growths having few, if any, thorns and certain ones the fruit of which natives of some countries considered edible. It sometimes happens in Mr. Bur- bank’s work that the essential thing is to com- bine excellent attributes and eliminate bad ones, rather than to create a wholly new plant. And so it was in the case of the cactus. And yet, in one sense, the cactus he has produced is absolutely new, because no other cactus has ever combined so many excellencies, devoid of obnoxious elements,—he has bred out the bad and bred in the good. It is quite like the 150 UOTPIAS PLL Jaye ‘oye, poyurydsursy oq [4 Aoy], “poses wo plo syoom JYSlo Mou ‘seQuNdG Sul[pees pliqAy ‘sso[ustoy,,, —‘s}se} snqoedg THE THORNLESS EDIBLE CACTUS touch of a great poet who finds the prosy story of a Hamlet or a Lear and leaves it a masterpiece. Out of some twenty genera of cacti, recog- nized by naturalists, only five occur in the United States, but these are among the most varied of all in their species, so that the one thousand known varieties of cactus are nearly all restricted to America. It is upon one of these five, common to the United States, the Opuntia, that Mr. Burbank has worked as a basis. It is of the variety having flat, thick leaves, though sometimes inclined to become cylindrical. It is a native of Mexico and South America. In their natural state their flowers are very striking, some of them red, others purple, others yellow. One of the species of the Opuntia is cultivated in Mexico as a host for the cochineal insect. The insect thrives upon its leaves, is killed at the proper time and dried, and from it is produced the brilliant carmine color so useful in commerce. The juice of the fruit is sometimes used as a water-color for painting and for coloring con- fectionery. Along the shores of the Mediter- ranean are several species of the Opuntia, the 151 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE fruit of one of which is called the Indian fig and is much liked. One of the Opuntias is hardy even in Alaska and in other similar climates, a characteristic which has had an important bearing on the work. This cactus was called in, also, for the scheme laid out contemplated not only a cactus without thorns and spicules and preéminently a food, but one which should be adapted to the arctics as well as the tropics, one, as Mr. Bur- bank puts it, which will grow anywhere where man can live from the soil. Other varieties were also chosen, one for one characteristic, one for another, but all essential in the build- ing up of the ideal plant. Seeds were secured from all the different varieties needed and planted by the thousands in beds specially prepared. The plants were in rows a few inches apart, from two to ten thousand plants to a bed. Extensive crossings were made by pollination as soon as the blos- soms came, this being followed up for several seasons. The object of this crossing, or hybri- dization, was to break up radically, once and forever, the habits fastened upon the plants for perhaps millions of years. Seeds from 152 THE THORNLESS EDIBLE CACTUS these new plants were then planted. So per- sistent is the cactus in its habits that thou- sands of new seedlings showed no tendency toward improvement. Indeed, many of them, as if in very defiance of man, bore uglier thorns than any of their ancestors. Many of them were a mass of woody fiber. But some very few showed that a profound change was coming over their lives. This was indicated by a notable lessening of the spines, thorns and bristles. All such plants were isolated for further crossing and selection. Tests were going on all the while, also, to ascertain whether or not any plants were losing their spicules. Such as were found improving in this direction were also isolated. And so for every excellence desired there was the sharpest scrutiny, and also for every bad feature—it was a daily battle for the best. At last, when ten years had gone by, the end of all this preliminary breeding and crossing and selecting came, and alongside the white picket fence which surrounds the home of Mr. Burbank rose a giant cactus, fully eight feet in height, bearing thalli or leaves from ten inches to a foot in length, five to eight inches in width, 153 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE nearly an inch in thickness, bearing fruit of large size, not a thorn upon it, not a spicule in all its rich meat,—the bitter enemy of the desert converted into an abiding friend of man. | In creating this edible, thornless cactus Mr. Burbank took into account a thousand and one things which may find no mention here, but one of them which may be noted shows how persistently practical is all his work. It takes much of the vital forces of the cactus to make its powerfully constructed thorns and to supply its thalli with spicules. In breeding these away from it he gives to Nature the opportunity to devote all her energies to the production of food and fruit, and this will have a most important bearing upon the future; he has not only transformed the cactus as to its product but has, in removing these thorns and spicules, provided a means for vastly increasing this product. The fruit of the new cactus is in shape quite like a fat cucumber slightly flattened at both ends. It is about two and one-quarter inches in diameter by three and a half inches long. Sometimes it is a beautiful yellow in color, 154 SUOT}IPUOD }IOSop jo quit, V —oor|dsip iis SnyORo Sso[UOUy ot FEUM THE THORNLESS EDIBLE CACTUS while in the fruit from another plant the flesh is crimson. It is delicious to the taste. To some it has the flavor of a peach, to some a melon, to some the suggestion of a pineapple, to some a blackberry—to every one who tastes it a different flavor from anything before eaten. It is, indeed, a new taste for the palate of the world. It may be eaten fresh or cooked, or it may be preserved. The thalli, too, have a peculiarly attractive flavor when cooked and may be eaten in a variety of ways, or they may be put up as ginger or melon rinds are preserved. As a food for cattle the thalli are peculiarly rich, at least one half as nutritious as alfalfa, and they will produce the finest beef, mutton and pork. It is quite significant, it may be said in passing, that at a time when _ industrious explorers of the United States Government were scouring the desert places of the earth in search of a thornless cactus which they thought might be introduced into the arid regions of America, finding at last in Algeria a prickly pear almost spineless, Mr. Burbank had been for years cultivating tens of thou- sands of cacti upon his proving grounds, 155 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE thousands of them at that very time practically thornless and spiculess, and all marching forward under his direction to produce a cactus which should not only have none of these undesirable things but which should have many others of distinct value to man. An indication of the wonderful growing powers of the new cactus is seen in the fact that in three years’ time a single plant from seed produces six hundred pounds of food. Another, and most important, feature of the new cactus is that it has begun to breed true to type, from the seed, while it, however, invariably persists from cuttings of the leaves. The cactus, as well as all other plants, stubborn or pliable, persists when once it has been definitely fixed in its new ways. Just as the cactus through all the ages has persisted in bearing thorns and persisted in filling its thalli with spicules, just so it will persist in getting along without them when once it has been fully broken of the habit of bearing them. So the new cactus begins a new era in its family, an era of unexampled prosperity, and the era of good will and not enmity to man. The possibilities of the new cactus have an 156 THE THORNLESS EDIBLE CACTUS enormous scope. The desert land on the globe is estimated to be two billion, seven hundred millions of acres, an area six thousand square miles larger than the area of the United States inclusive of its insular possessions. All this save, perhaps, in some case where absolutely no rain falls, may be reclaimed for food for man and beast if needs be. The regions known as steppes, much of which is semi-arable, is estimated at nearly nine billions of square miles additional, practically all of which may be utilized for the new cactus. The fertile regions of the globe are considerably larger than both these regions, some twenty-nine millions of square miles, over sixteen billions of acres. On every foot of fertile soil the cactus will grow with still greater rapidity than in the desert, for it takes on a new and powerful impulse under cultivation. These figures give something of the possi- bilities. In Mr. Burbank’s own words: “The population of the globe may be doubled and yet, in the immediate food of the cactus plant itself and in the food animals which may be raised upon it, there would still be enough for all.” 157 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE The new cactus will not be raised to sell. It is not at this time fully ready, for while the main end has been reached, other work in it must be done before it begins its career. As soon as it is finished, any man with a few feet of earth in the corner of some city back yard, any man with a garden in the country, any man with acres which have lost their fertility or with large areas on mountain or desert which have been long abandoned, may be- come a sharer in the fruits of this act. For here, as in all that he has ever done, the supreme purpose of his life looms up, colossal in its contrast with the mean selfishness of man: He has done all for the advancement of the race. This fearsome dreaded foe of the race has been conquered, the times of little rain are set at naught, the great flame-hearted sun itself, burning its mighty way across the blistering desert is defied, the whole desert and arable regions of the globe by the act of one man may become a limitless reservoir of food. 158 Sasol alvl Ss yuURqIng “Ay, JO 9uQ ‘ CHAPTER X CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES ‘ie a study of Mr. Burbank’s great work one is not less amazed at its extent than baffled by its variety. His approach to Nature lies through many avenues;—it is a source of never-ending surprise to see how completely he commands these avenues while steadily opening others. In this chapter it is proposed to touch upon some of the many experiments which may not be incorporated in this volume as individual chapters because of the limitations of space, though in them may be found ample material for such chapters. Roses have long held high favor with Mr. Burbank, both because of his love for the flower itself and because of its possibilities in the way of increase in size, enrichment of color and odor, and in the adaptation of certain roses, highly prized but confined to a restricted zone of cultivation, so that they 159 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE may be elsewhere enjoyed. Some years ago he developed a rose primarily for bedding purposes, purchased by an eastern florist and by him put upon the market, the Burbank rose. It seemed to catch something of the tremendous energy and enthusiasm of its creator, for it soon made itself felt as the freest flowering rose in cultivation. It begins to blossom when it is not more than three inches in height and, if the climate will permit, it keeps on blossoming the entire year. In colder climates it goes into winter quarters unafraid, and hastens out of its long sleep at the very earliest call of spring. It is a double rose, a deep rose-pink in color, beautifully shaded from the center and nearly three inches in diameter. In colder climates, when October days come the outer petals take on a carmine hue. The plants develop into symmetrical bushes, adding to their attractiveness. This rose ran the gauntlet of the World’s Fair in St. Louis, in 1904, and won the gold medal over all competitors as the best bedding rose in the world. It is only one of many superb varieties of roses which Mr. Burbank has made. 160 OL do I {vou [de bo m *‘Q0UL 3B By Aye I duat Ou BA Poa I Ayal Avy Sul } oly ey JOA jo ot id Boul add CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES Mr. Burbank was attracted by a wild ever- lasting flower which produces a rather inferior blossom in its Australian home, but which promised to develop into something far more attractive. Following the usual course of selection, he chose from among its plants those bearing the choicest blossoms, saved the seeds from these plants, and thus by constantly choosing those plants that approached the model in his mind, carried the flower forward through successive generations to a larger and far more beautiful state. The color of the blossoms, a delicate pink, was intensified and the blossom itself doubled in size. There are numerous “everlasting” flowers, more or less attractive to the eye, and to add a new flower to their list would not have been so extraordinary a thing, but the development of the Australian flower had a wholly distinc- tive purpose, the production of a flower for use in the manufacture of millinery goods and for use in allied decorative lines. Thus the new flower becomes commercially important, promising very largely to displace artificial flowers of wire, paint and cloth for the adorn- ment of women’s hats. The flower is not only 161 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE beautiful in form and color and everlasting, but it is fadeless and will not be injured by handling. One of the largest millinery manu- facturing firms has contracted to buy the flower. Mr. Burbank makes note of the fact that there are other flowers of this kind sus- ceptible of like improvement. Fifteen years ago Mr. Burbank, taking into account the fact that the quince can be grown with probably less expense than any other fruit and that it had never occupied the place which he thought it should occupy, set about its improvement. It is said that some of the choicest so-called quince jellies on the market have been made from the refuse of apples, pears and other fruits brought up to the imita- tion of the quince flavor by judicious doctor- ing. The quince itself had long been neg- lected by fruit-raisers, and, at its best, was an inferior fruit compared with other fruits. The “pineapple” quince was the outcome of all the years of work upon this fruit, a quince which, as Mr. Burbank says, “will cook as tender in five minutes as the best of cooking apples and with a quince flavor not before equaled, Jelly made from it is pronounced 1b2 CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES by some superior to that made from any other fruit. The fruit in form and size very much resembles the Orange quince but is smoother and more globular; in color much lighter yellow, with an average weight of about three-quarters of a pound each.” Still other varieties are under way which promise to far surpass even the pineapple quince. For many years Mr. Burbank has carried on extensive tests in berries of different kinds. Many tests are still under way at Sebastopol. One of the most important features of this line of work is the ultimate removal of the thorns from all thorn-bearing berries, and from roses as well. Mr. Burbank asked me one day, as we were walking through the proving grounds at Sebastopol, to bend over a blackberry bush growing rather close to the ground, and rub its stem against my face. It certainly was a novel experience—the thorns had been entirely bred away from the plant. So will it be with all thorn-bearing fruits if he shall find time to transform them, for, as in this particular instance, all that is essential is that a systematic and patient course of selec- tion be followed. 163 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE One of the rarest of all the fruits which have come from Mr. Burbank’s hand is the white blackberry, the union of a small light- colored wild berry, of no particular impor- tance, and a Lawton blackberry. The union gave to the new plant great vigor and large size to the berry, the berry, at the same time, losing the dark purplish black of its larger ancestor and appearing a clear, beauti- ful white. The fruit is not only fair to look upon, but delightful to the taste. Some idea of the vastness of the work even in the pro- duction of berries is shown in the fact that in producing the white blackberry sixty-five thousand hybrid bushes which did not come up to the standard set for them were de- stroyed at one time. One plant out of sixty- five thousand, but the one successful plant paid for all the time, the trouble, and the infinite patience which had been expended. He is still working upon the white black- berry in order to give it still finer flavor and to increase its productiveness. In the crossmg of the various berries, no- tably the blackberry and the raspberry, re- markable variations in both stalk and leaf 164 CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES were seen. The stalks varied greatly in color, also, some of them white, some red, some dark purple, some bronze, some yellow, some of them brown or green or black. The leaves were remarkably interesting in their wonderful diversity. Literally scores of leaves, all different in shape and size, grew from the seed of one hybrid blackberry plant. A few seeds were secured for Mr. Bur- bank by one of his collectors from a black- berry growing in the Himalaya Mountains. The plants which came from the seeds were selected through a series of years with the end in view of encouraging and still further developing the rapidity of growth which was said to characterize the foreign berry. At last a single plant, a young plant at that, was developed which covered one hundred and fifty square feet of ground, stood eight feet in height, and bore over a bushel of fruit. I saw growing on Mr. Burbank’s grounds at Santa Rosa a row of plants apparently but lately out of the ground, possibly an inch in height. The row was about six feet 165 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE long, a clearly defined green line on the dark earth. A foot or so from the tiny plants was another row double in size. Alongside of this were other rows, larger and thriftier of growth than the preceding one. At the end of the plat which embraced the test, was a heavy row of rich dark grass, broad of leaf, dense of growth, the leaves being from ten to twelve inches long. The plants had a remarkably brilliant green color and were the picture of vegetable health. The experiment was in grasses, a line of work Mr. Burbank has begun with the promise of important results. Indeed, he once carried on a series of grass tests, developng a number of rare grasses remarkable both for rapidity of growth and variety of color, but was obliged to discontinue the tests at the time. In these tests the possibility of development in grasses was clearly proven. In the experiment noted above, the tiny inch-high grass was of the same variety as the largest plant in the test. While it had been growing its inch the other had been growing twelve inches, the surface of the one plant being fully five hundred times as 166 CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES great as that of the companion of the same lot of seed. The difference between the two was that one was a slow-growing, the other a rapid-growing seedling. As in all manner of fruit tree and other tree tests the seed- lings vary greatly in the rapidity of their growth, so in the grasses,—the test under way was to determine which one of these seedlings was the fastest growing and most vigorous; from that final selection would be made in the development of a better type of grass. Mr. Burbank has been studying for a long time the question of providing a rich, nutritious grass for barren regions. It is on this line he has been at work, as well as upon the production of lawn grasses which will grow much more compact and get along with less water than the old types of grass. The tests in grasses promise to be of exceptional interest and value. Mr. Burbank also recognizes a large field of operations in the improvement of native wild grasses, and even in the ennoblement of the weeds themselves. Upon this point he says: “What occupation can be more 4elightful 167 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE than adopting the most promising individual from among a race of vile, neglected or- phan weeds with settled, hoodlum tenden- cies, down-trodden and despised by all, and gradually liftg it by breeding and educa- tion to a higher sphere; to see it gradually change its sprawling habits, its coarse, ill- smelling foliage, its insignificant blossoms of dull color, to an upright plant with hand- some, glossy, fragrant leaves, blossoms of every hue, and with a fragrance as pure and lasting as could be desired? “In the more profound study of the life of plants, both domestic and wild, we are surprised to see how much they are like children. Study their wants, help them to what they need, be endlessly patient, be honest with them, carefully correcting each fault as it appears, and in due time they will reward you bountifully for every care and attention, and make your heart glad in ob- serving the results of your work. Weeds are weeds because they are jostled, crowded, cropped and trampled upon, scorched by fierce heat, starved or perhaps suffering with cold, wet feet, tormented by insect pests or 168 CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES lack of nourishing food and sunshine. Most of them have opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious beauty and abundance. A few are so fixed in their habits that it is better to select an individual for adoption and improvement from a race which is more pliable. This stability of character cannot often be known except by careful trial, there- fore members from several races at the same time may be selected with advantage; the most pliable and easily educated one will soon make the fact manifest by showing a tendency to ‘break’ or vary slightly or per- haps profoundly from the wild state. Any variation should be at once seized upon and numerous seedlings raised from this individ- ual. In the next generation one, or several, even more marked variations will be almost certain to appear; for, when a plant once wakes up to the new influences brought to bear upon it, the road is opened for endless improvement in all directions, and the ope- rator finds himself with a wealth of new forms which is almost as discouraging to select from as, in the first place, it was to induce the plant to vary in the least, —now comes 169 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE the point where the skill of the operator is put to the severest test. When a wild plant has been induced to change its old habits, fixed by ages of uniform environment, it needs some one with a steady hand to guide it into a condition of refinement and beauty sufficient to adorn any occasion.” One of the rarest flowers Mr. Burbank has ever produced met a tragic fate. It was a most beautiful and delicately tinted flower upon a vine of exquisite greenness, a vine which would be suited admirably for interior decoration or for use in masses upon lawns. It was a hybrid mesembryan- themum, a plant whose habit is to open its beautiful flowers in the sunshine but to close them when the dark weather comes on. The hybrid, while like its ancestors in some general characters, was still unique among flowers, and Mr. Burbank set great store by it. One morming a workman in the part of the grounds where the flower was growing dis- covered that every plant, wherever it was located some being in one part of the grounds, some in another— had met simul- taneous death at the hands of some mys- 170 CERTAIN GENERAL FEATURES terious enemy, or from some sudden and fatal plant illness; but not a clue had been left and the loss was a very heavy one. ‘The plant could never be reproduced, but fortu- nately photographs of it had been made. Many times, however, in the midst of the tests, the foes of the insect and animal world make open war upon the plants, and it would seem sometimes as if with malice aforethought. Some particularly valuable gladioli were surrounded by a row of ordi- nary gladioli in order to tempt the thieving gophers, should they appear, to satisfy them- selves with the coarser bulbs and thus pre- serve the choice ones. The gophers, how- ever, were not to be put off in any such manner, but passed by the common bulbs and destroyed the rare ones, entailing a severe loss. Mr. Burbank showed me one day a large bed of seedling roses. In one end was a heavy growth of young plants, in the other a space several feet square in which there were not over a half dozen tiny little plants just peeping up through the soil. The plants which had been spared by the birds that had swooped down upon the 171 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE plot mm an unguarded moment were not specially valuable, but the ones which the birds had selected were very rare and the test was all but defeated. So was it with a new generation of beautiful hybrid lark- spurs upon which he had been working for a number of years. The plants were in beds which have wire screens to protect them from the birds, but a workman had thoughtlessly left the screen off and the birds in a few moments wrought havoc with the plants that were more than worth, as Mr. Burbank put it, their weight in dia- monds. There is a constant battle going on against these foes of the plants. 172 CHAPTER XI BREEDING FOR PERFUME HEN one has come to some apprecia- tion of the wide extent of Mr. Bur- bank’s life-work among the plants of the world, it is not difficult to imagine the flowers gathered in delicate array to make known their individual needs, praying for aid at the hands of one who has never refused them service. One has length and strength of stem but meagerness of blossom, it is longing for more beautiful flowers;—an answer to its prayer comes in the passing of the years and it grows on and on until it bears a rare, fragrant coronal. One has never been able to hold up its head in the presence of its fellows, bearing its blossoms on a single side of its stem, a sad, top-heavy state;—cannot help be given? As swiftly as may be the gift of grace follows, and now its blossoms surround its stem in radiant beauty. Another has never liked its 173 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE color; it would be red where all the centuries it has been golden; a strange little wild beauty would change from the royal purple of a king to the color of the snows upon the mountains ; —and they are transformed as by a miracle. A host presses forward from all the ends of the earth ;—they are wild, would that they might become tame! And lo! they are changed; they join the fair company of the gardens of the world whose part it is to furnish adornment to those still more fair or to carry their fragrance to the beds of those who lie in pain. And so it goes among many hundreds of them, each needing something,—beauty, or strength, or hardiness, or length of days,—and the prayer of all is granted. Ah! but there still remains one unsatisfied: its longing is the most intense of all. It has all that the others have longed for, but it has one sad impairment. It has been doomed through the centuries to bear a most wretched odor, an offense to its fellows, to the world ;— if it only could be given some sweet scent like its dear neighbors! This is the hardest request of all. The 174 BREEDING FOR PERFUME flower has made the greatest demand upon the skill and the resources and the commanding ‘genius of the friend of all flowers. But even this is granted: a new epoch in the life of the flowers of the earth has come: they need remain scentless no longer. For twenty-five years Mr. Burbank had been studying the dahlia before he found a way of answering its prayer for relief from its offensive odor; now it is to be freed from its burden. He has driven out the disagreeable odor and, in its place, he has left the fragrance of the magnolia. The dahlia is a fascinating flower with which to work. Year by year as he studied it and progressed in its development, making it more beautiful, hardier, more interesting in shape of blossom, he brought new varieties into service from other lands to make use of in combination with his own. One of these was originally from Mexico, Dahha Juarezi, the parent of the dahlia now commonly called the cactus dahlia, with petals more on the order of the chrysanthemum. From the imported varieties he has worked on with the types of his own creation, all the 175 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE time building up more beautiful forms. It is interesting to note, in passing, that while the dahlia seeds which he has sent out to leading amateur gardeners in various parts of the world are the ones which he has discarded as not valuable enough to use in carrying forward his experiments,—reserving, of necessity, the very best ones for the work in hand,—yet he has received enthusiastic letters from those who have grown flowers from these discarded seeds, reciting the triumphs won in prizes and premiums at flower shows and county fairs. The dahlia, like many another flower, when first broken of an old habit of life and led into a new one, finds it sometimes hard to persist in the new way. Everything is strange. It is called upon to do things it never was called upon to do before. A million past tendencies are at work to keep it in the old paths. So, when any new and particularly desirable trait is developed, it is often hard to fix it. And in the fixing of this trait a thousand things must be taken into account,—incidents in its life history, peculiarities of environment, methods of growth and development, individual char- acteristics. 176 unt dahlias A bed of the new fra BREEDING FOR PERFUME “To keep track of the details of a plant’s life under change from an old order of things,” says Mr. Burbank, “and to bear in mind all that must be remembered and considered as to its life history,—beside this, the classifica- tion of the botanists is child’s play.” When the flower which has been changed in form or color has been watched through a series of years and shows no sign of return to its old ways, then it may be left to itself to follow out the new order of its changed life. It certainly took a long while to make the dahlia double, for example, but this is now a fixed characteristic with no general reversion to the old order. It so happened one day, several years ago, that Mr. Burbank, while in the dahlia proving- plots, suddenly noticed one flower which bore none of the disagreeable odor characteristic of this plant, but, in its place, a faint fragrance, elusive, but undeniably sweet. Instantly the flower was isolated, and with the most jealous care its seeds were saved and planted. A problem of immense difficulty was before him, for of all the qualities of a plant the most elusive, the least understandable, the most lat i NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE intangible, the most difficult to get under control, is that of odor. A thousand and one things interfere to make the problem more difficult. The color of the flowers, the shape of leaves and petals and stem, these are before the eyes and changes in them may be watched and recorded from generation to generation,— but the perfume, no instrument of man can measure or record it: it is the very soul of the flower. Nevertheless, the more difficult the problem the greater his zest for entering upon it, the deeper his delight in the final solution. New plants raised from the seeds of this scented dahlia showed a variety of answers to the problem. Some had scarcely, if any, odor, and that not pleasant; some persisted in the full measure of the old disagreeable trait; a very few had some hint of the perfume of the rich magnolia blossom. All but the latter were at once put to death as unworthy to live in the test to follow. Again the seeds were planted and again the plants were rigidly selected; and so it went on through generations until, one day, there came forth a plant with the full, sweet fragrance of 178 BREEDING FOR PERFUME the magnolia while still retaining all its other good qualities; and then he knew that the battle was won. It might be long until the perfumed dahlia was fully fixed, and longer yet to introduce the new flower to the world, but the chief object had been reached,—the offensive odor had been driven out and in its place had been established a rare and lasting perfume: it was the working of a modern miracle. “It is not so difficult,” Mr. Burbank says of the new scented dahlia, “to teach a plant to transmit other characteristics, and, once its new traits have been fixed, it has no difficulty in keeping on in the new way. When the dahha once learned to be double, for example, and had had a term of years in which to fix itself in this new form, it was easy enough to go onward in the same way. But it was a new thing for the dahlia to change its odor, it took a long time for it to get used to it. All its life habits through thousands of generations had to be broken up. It was its lifelong habit to bear a disagreeable odor. It was no ordinary thing in its life to make the change; it could not easily give up its old ways. At first, prob- 179 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE ably not one out of a thousand seeds produced a flower with any fragrance. It is far easier for a flower to rebel and throw off a new per- fume than it is for it to discard some other characteristic which it has been led to adopt.” Now that the solution of the problem has been reached, it is only the question of the necessary time for the conversion of the entire dahlia family to fragrance. To change an ill odor into a delightful one is one of the most remarkable of Mr. Bur- bank’s achievements in breeding for perfume, but to give a flower fragrance where none before existed, this is a still more difficult task. For years he has been at work perfecting a heretofore scentless verbena, increasing it in size and beauty of blossoms and giving it a more commanding place among the flowers of the world. In the evening of a summer day, while he was walking in the plots set apart for the testing of the verbenas, a faint odor came up to him on the soft night air. It was so curious a thing, coming from a bed of flowers before bearing no fragrance, that he instantly began a search in the bed for the plant whose blossom had shown this strange scent. 180 BREEDING FOR PERFUME The search was unavailing, however, and a year passed by. Again, in the dusk of just such an evening, he happened to be near the ver- benas, and again the ghost of an odor came upward. This time he was not to be denied, and he did not leave the task until he had crept on hands and knees through the verbena beds, discovering, at last, the plant with the subtle fragrance, the faint sweet suggestion of the trailing arbutus, when it comes up in fair, pink beauty through the white snows of the North. The plant was at once isolated and then began a rigid selection of plants from its seeds, following the same process observed in the dahlia. Year by year the work of selection went on with the utmost care and patience, and year by year the plants showed stronger and gradually stronger traces of the mother odor. At last the fragrance was fixed, greatly intensified in power, so that now it is double the strength of the trailing arbutus and identi- cal with it. The flowers that were scentless have been given a powerful perfume, so firmly established that it will not fade. It oceurred to Mr. Burbank one day that it 181 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE would be interesting to give an odor to a calla upon which he was working. Very carefully the plants under test were studied, and at last one was found which bore signs of being a desirable one to use in furthering the experi- ment. Work was at once begun on it. After years of study and labor he has bred into a scentless calla the odor of the Parma violet, the rarest of violet odors. One of the many strange incidents occurring all through the work which Mr. Burbank carries on developed while some of the lily tests were under way. One curious lily had gone backward into a sad state of total depravity, as far as fragrance is concerned. It gave forth an odor so powerfully repugnant that the people livnmg in a cottage on the grounds at Sebastopol near the lily bed, found it impossible to endure it. One day before the bed was destroyed, Mr. Burbank was sitting in the sunshine after his luncheon watching a huge buzzard soaring in the blue sky. Sud- denly the bird paused in its sweep, poised an instant, and then shot down into the bed of lilies. It floundered around an instant in the bed and then, with, as Mr. Burbank expressed 182 BREEDING FOR PERFUME it, the most disgusted look on a bird’s face he ever saw, flew away. While it has long been a mooted question with naturalists as to whether or not the buzzards, vultures and other birds of prey of their class, see, or smell, the carrion which is their delight, the view now held by many leading men is that they depend wholly upon their sight, while Mr. Burbank’s experience with his outcast lilies proved in this instance the opposite. To breed flowers for a certain quality,— beauty, endurance, longevity, hardiness,—this is immensely difficult. It is immeasurably more difficult to breed them for the produc- tion of perfume, their subtlest element. Now that Mr. Burbank has demonstrated that flowers may be bred for perfume, that odors may be changed, that scentless flowers may be given fragrance, much work remains for others. It is incredible, the amount of work he has accomplished. He has still larger work before him than any he has ever attempted, and, of necessity, very much that he has under way must be carried forward, as to details, by others. He is never more gratified than when some one else can take 183 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE up work which he has begun but which he has not the time to complete, and carry it forward for the adornment or the material welfare of the world. There is ample opportunity in the breeding of perfumes, as in other departments of his work, for others to go forward in the develop- ment of the more practical side. In all the initial experiments, however, this practical side is never lost to sight. He has a poet’s love for beauty and he has rare delight in adding to the charm of the world, but he bears along with this the intense practical nature of the shrewdest captain of industry. It is a cardi- nal principle of Mr. Burbank’s never to make a new creation without developing, so far as possible, its practical value. Speaking of the making of a blue rose,—he has already made a blue poppy,—he said that it was one of the easiest things in the world if one should set out diligently upon it, but it would consume very much time in the making and it would be doubtful, after all, if it added much to the charm of this rare flower. He has studied the rose with great care, and he has seen in the consideration of its coloring an 184 BREEDING FOR PERFUME easy avenue to a land of blue roses. as to just how soon to begin work on another flower, though the one first chosen should constitute the major study. Many opportunities are presented, too, for vegetable-breeding. In passing, it should be borne in mind by those who have a desire to combine thrift with pleasure, that no incon- siderable increase in income to a man or woman of moderate means may come from the creation of new and improved forms of floral and vegetable life. In order, of course, to prepare a new flower or a new vegetable for 241 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE the market, time enough must be allowed thoroughly to test it so that it will not revert to some former inferior stage. In general, Mr. Burbank says that six or eight generations of persistence in a given trait usually are suf- ficient to fix that trait, and to warrant one in announcing a new flower and offering it for sale from one’s own gardens or to some of the great seedsmen or florists. Among the vegetables, potatoes and_to- matoes are both very easy to work upon, and excellent results may be looked for, both in the improvement of size, flavor and hardiness. Corn of all varieties, though particularly the sweet corns, he recommends. Squashes are more difficult to cross satisfactorily, as well as melons, though they are apt to bring very satisfactory results. Considerable difficulty will be experienced by the beginner in working on peas and beans, but, if the work is successfully done, remarkable results are likely to follow. He does not think it worth while to try to improve such vegetables as cauliflower, lettuce and cabbages by crossing, because they are most excellent as they are, and to cross them might easily result in so breaking up their old 242 HOW MAY I DO IT TOO;—BREEDING life habits and forming new ones as to result in vastly more harm than good. This he constantly guards against in his own work,—his aim is always to make things better than they ever were before. He does, however, heartily encourage selection, choosing the best plant of a given vegetable and, from year to year, choosing the best of its plants in turn, thereby steadily carrying it upward. He suggests here, as in the case of the flowers, that one choose some one particular vegetable which he thinks should be improved—one that needs to be larger, or better-looking, or thriftier, or finer in quality, and work on and on with it, as with the flowers, until the end desired is reached. Mr. Burbank urges the work of plant- breeding upon clerks, upon laboring men, business men, professional men, especially girls and women,— upon any man or woman who would like to take a hand in making the earth amore beautiful place in which to live. He points out the fact that results of sur- passing importance may come to the hand of any man who takes up this work primarily as a pastime or as a means of health. No man can 243 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE tell how a given experiment may end. Some- times, even in his own work, carried on upon so vast a scale and with apparently a command of every possible avenue of knowledge leading up to a given test, a plant will now and then burst forth in some new and wholly unex- pected direction and accomplish marvelous results. It is much as though the spirit of the plant had been waiting in embryo all these years for some one to bring it forth to life. He lays special stress, too, upon the fascina- tion of the work. Here is a man who has been engaged in plant-breeding for nearly forty years, who has created more new forms of plant life than any other man who has ever lived, who has been what one might almost call surfeited by successes, but who takes up each new experiment with as great a zest as ever, whose eye sparkles and whose face glows over a new development or the solution of a problem as vividly as it did when he began the work many years ago. For a man who is accustomed to the cold hard facts of the every-day, dealing with problems whose chief factors are dollars and cents, —for such a man to be able to take a life and train it into new 244 payeuisiio Ady} o19yM ‘vsoy vJURG ye jso} JopuN svUuUYD ~UMO]ALIBT,, pue | yuRqang,, ot], a a ‘, HOW MAY I DO IT TOO;—BREEDING ways, to change its habits, to break up old traits, to make it more beautiful and more useful,—in a word, to handle and mold it as the potter his clay,—all this has in it a fasci- nation beyond the conception of one who has never entered upon such a course. Again he makes this point: That plant- breeding for the amateur is one of the most important aids to health. Plant-breeding and selection can never be carried on at their best save in the open. To be sure, there are tests which may be begun, and some which may largely be carried on, in the winter months indoors, and these have their own peculiar interest, but there is a large part of the year in any temperate climate, and almost the entire year in some portions of the country, where the work of plant-breeding can be carried on out-of-doors. It is in this outdoor life that Mr. Burbank sees one of the greatest goods that can possibly come to a man com- pelled for a great portion of his time to an indoor life. The plant-breeder, he maintains, should have neither time nor inclination to be sick. Highest of all his reasons for urging plant- 245 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE breeding upon all people is its distinct moral influence. No man, he holds, can be a successful plant- breeder and practice deceit. He stands face to face with Nature, who never lies. No man, as he puts it, can come close to the heart of Nature and see how absolute is her honesty, never for a moment deviating a hair’s breadth from the line of truth, and not be made a more honest man for the contact. In short, beyond all spirit of ethics, a man, he puts it, must be an honest man or he will never succeed at plant-breeding;—if he is not an honest man when he begins, Nature will make him so or drive him out of it. So there are five cardinal points in Mr. Burbank’s argument for the extension of plant- breeding among people of all classes: 1. The possibilities in the creation of new flowers and vegetables of surpassing value. 2. The intense fascination of the work, not only giving delight but broadening and deepening any life which takes it up. 3. The opportunity for the production of flowers and vegetables which shall have a distinct commercial value. 246 HOW MAY I DO IT TOO;—BREEDING 4. Its hygienic bearing upon those who wish to maintain the good health they already have and upon those who are seeking the health they may sadly need. 5. The absolute necessity for devotion to truth—the breeding of honesty. I saw one day on a piece of paper which a friend had pinned to the wall in Mr. Bur- bank’s little sitting-room this quotation from his favorite author, Emerson, singularly appro- priate to such a man, but which any man who makes a new flower may some day be able to take to himself: “If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his home in the wilderness, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” Q4'7 CHAPTER XV HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING He. who is fortunate enough to stand some midsummer day on the summit of the Macayamas, an inner spur of the great Coast range, hard by the Pacific and skirting the beautiful Sonoma valley, will look out upon a scene of surpassing interest. In the foreground lies the fertile valley, with the fruit of its hundreds of ranches ripening in the mellow sunshine, pears and peaches, apricots and apples, plums and prunes and cherries, with here and there great vineyards heavy with grapes, the whole broken in upon by wide green fields of hops and broader stretches of yellow wheat, with the reapers already at their work. Through the valley flows the winding Russian river, emptying at last through a pass in the mountains into the Pacific at the point where the Russians came down in the early days and sought to fix their flag upon Spanish soil ; while far through the distance, across the 248 HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING green and yellow valley, rise the white peaks of the high Sierras two hundred miles away, their summits forever clothed in snow, keeping watch above their lower mountain wards and over the fair valley below. Just across the valley over the roof-tops of Santa Rosa you may see the low hills of Sebastopol ;— there lie the acres which have given scope for the great work of Mr. Burbank. Here is the culmination of the tests, the great proving grounds where the final standard is set up, alongside of which the flower or fruit must measure itself or be doomed to death. On these grounds, reaching eighteen acres in extent, the grafting of trees and the raising of seedlings goes on from year to year, as well as very much extensive work in pollenating and selection. And the scale on which these things are carried forward is larger than any ever before known in the history of the world. A sunny, beautiful spot it is, far from city sounds and strifes, lying softly asleep in the golden sunshine with the fair hills beyond, purple or crimson or yellow or white as the summer flowers come on in never-ending procession. Asleep it is, and yet awake, 249 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE insistently, aggressively awake, for here from dawn to dark a life of the most tense activity is lived where things must be done with the regularity of a machine and the persistence of the sun in its course. Here the field experi- ments are carried on, and here Mr. Burbank does his largest work. Flowers are raised here by the hundred thousand, by the half million indeed, waiting the eye of the master of them all who shall say what one out of all their vast number shall be saved. Here seeds of all manner of fruits are planted by the hundreds of thousands if needs be, apples, pears, peaches, quinces, nectarines, plums, prunes,— a list as long as the list of the world’s best known fruits. Here are long rows of young trees, hardly saplings in size, from two to five years old and from three to five feet in height, standing in serried rows so close to one an- other that the tiny branches intertwine. They will all be scrutinized one of these days, and the best of them all, one perhaps out of a hundred thousand, will be saved. The rest will be dug up and burned in great brush heaps. Sometimes there have been as many as fourteen of these huge heaps, comprising from 250 HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING sixty to seventy thousand shrubs or young trees in a single test burned up in a single day, and simply because they did not come up to the standard set for them. Here and there after such a slaughter you may see a tiny little tree, perhaps leafless and certainly to the eye of the layman presenting no signs of superiority. But it bears a curious little badge, a white streamer of cloth tied about its middle, the sign that henceforth it is sacred,—it is the one best one of the thousands. Some idea of the magnitude of the work may be obtained from the following figures, illustrating the average number of fruits under test at a given time at Sebastopol from year to year: Three hundred thousand distinct varieties of plums, different in foliage, in form of fruit, in shipping, keeping and canning qualities, sixty thousand peaches and nectarines, five to six thousand almonds, two thousand cherries, two thousand pears, one thousand grapes, three thousand apples, one thousand two hundred quinces, five thousand walnuts, five thousand chestnuts, five to six thousand berries 251 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE of various kinds, with many thousands of other fruits, flowers and vegetables. The grafting done at Sebastopol, like all the work carried on there, is on a large scale. Ina single grafting season, which comprises about ninety working days, more than a hundred thousand grafts will be set, covering a wide variety of experiments gomg forward at the same time with many different kinds of fruits. From these grafts will grow in a single season material for nearly ten million additional grafts. Some years since, a company was formed in California whose entire business was the making of grafts from one of Mr. Bur- bank’s choicest plums, selling the grafts to nurserymen and fruit-growers all over the world. At various points throughout the grafting section of the grounds young men may be seen perched on the tops of ladders in the midst of the branches of the trees upon which the grafts are set. In this, as in the case of flowers and vegetables, Mr. Burbank stands ready with suggestions for those who wish to take up this branch of the work. From the young trees which have been 252 = NS if Vj o 5 graftin * method of o 5 Showin HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING saved out of the burnings in the different tests branches are cut away, and each branch, little more than a twig in size, not more than half as thick as the little finger, is cut up into pieces about two inches long, each piece, tech- nically called a cion, bearing two to three buds. The tops and side branches of the tree which is to serve as the host for all the many grafts must be cut away, leaving the tree pre- senting a peculiarly grotesque appearance. In the end of each branch the pieces of the twigs from the little trees under test are to be placed. These host, or parent, trees are used from year to year, sometimes a single tree bearing five hundred distinct kinds of grafts at the same time. The workman who is grafting is equipped with a sharp pruning-knife, a saw to cut away the upper branches, a pot of melted wax, a brush and some pieces of white cloth. In the end of the sawed-off branch of the parent tree he cuts a slit with his knife. He has made one end of the two tiny grafts he holds wedge- shaped. One of the grafts he holds in his mouth, while he forces the wedge of the other down into the slit. Then the second graft is 253 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE stuck in place, sometimes three or even four to a single branch, the pot of melted wax is lifted up, the branch end and the graft are thickly spread with it, a white cloth is wound about the jomt—the union is complete; and rapidly the sap of the old tree begins sending its life-forces up through the new life growing upon it. The graft grows on and on until it is two or possibly three seasons old; then it puts out its own buds and flowers, bears its own fruit, wholly different it may be from any other fruit growing upon the other branches. The union of the graft and the parent tree will not be complete unless the cambium of the two is merged. This cambium is a layer of viscid, mucilaginous substance composed of cells, lying between the bark and the wood of the tree and from which both derive their growth. Mr. Burbank calls it a predigested food, for the nourishment of the new graft. Sometimes the workman makes a long slanting cut instead of cutting the branch off square and makes a similar cut in the graft. Two slits are then made in each, and the tongues of the graft thus formed are forced down into the slits of the branch. 254 HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING Many other kinds of grafts are in use by horticulturists, but Mr. Burbank considers these two quite sufficient. Budding, which is the placing of the bud of the graft or cion underneath the bark of the parent or host tree, he very seldom uses. Some years since, a profound discussion was carried on in England over grafting, the oppo- nents of it claiming that it was always a make- shift, often a fraud; that it was, in effect, only a kind of adulteration; that any fruit tree that would not succeed on its own roots should go to the rubbish heap; that grafted trees are coddled, while own-rooted trees are in all ways infinitely better, healthier and longer- lived. It seems quite enough to say in this connection that the man who has carried on the blending of tree and cion upon a scale of greater extent than any other man finds graft- ing not only eminently successful but impera- tive. One single series of experiments carried . on for so many years and on so vast a scale as Mr. Burbank’s experiments is sufficient to dis- prove many theories and to overturn many conclusions. But there remains something else of still 255 © NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE greater importance,—the fruit of this graft must be superior to all fruits of its kind which have preceded it, more nutritious, more deli- cious to the taste, more attractive to the eye, safer to ship than any of its forbears. All these points must be settled, together with other important points as to hardiness and yielding qualities, and adaptability to various soils and climates before the new fruit can be given to the world. The demands constantly made upon him in the production of a new fruit are very many and of great insistence before the fruit or flower has been brought up to his ideal. Some strange things happen in the midst of this grafting, and some of these, or others quite as curious, may happen to any one who takes up this peculiarly fascinating branch of plant-breeding. Sometimes in Mr. Burbank’s experience the graft will influence the tree upon which it is grafted, increasing its foliage, strengthening its roots, and otherwise making it more thrifty. He grafted a Japanese pear, for example, upon a Bartlett pear, and while the graft went forward, producing the Japan- ese pear fruit, the parent pear tree bearing its 256 HCW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING customary Bartlett pears, the parent tree soon took on a greatly increased vigor. Sometimes the union of the graft and the tree will be complete, but, as he puts it, in the great stress of unusual drought or fruiting the grafted por- tion will separate again, later, and entirely fall off. Curious results are seen in some crosses, as, for example, some plum- almond crosses where there was every possible variation in the flowers,—some of them having all stamens and no pistils, some having many petals, some having no petals, some never opening like normal flowers at all, some having no stamens but only pistils. Sometimes a cross of a peach and an almond will produce a tree as large as ten peach trees or almond trees of the same age. Sometimes the precise opposite will be the case. Now and then the graft grows up thrift- ily and bears fruit, and its seeds are planted with the result that none will grow. Mr. Burbank says that a certain character, or char- acteristic, may lie latent through many gene- rations, or even centuries, and then appear just when the right cross is made to bring it out. But probably the most mysterious thing that has ever happened, in some ways at least, 257 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE in all his grafting tests was that of a union of two plums, one brought over from France, there being no other plum like it in the new world, the other the Kelsey plum, well known in western America. The graft was attached to the parent tree, the Kelsey, in the usual way, but, when blooming time came, the graft, though growing heartily, put forth no blos- soms. It did, however, a still stranger thing than this, one of the strangest in all plant history,—it changed the entire life of the par- ent,—a thing hinted at by Darwin as being in the list of possibilities but never known before. The tree, by some strange influence born of the grafting, completely changed its own life, or, at least, so changed it that its own seeds in turn developed the French plum. It thus formed in the tree itself a cross between two trees that had never been crossed before, the life of the one entering into and transforming the life of the other. Mr. Burbank heartily recommends the work of grafting from seedlings to all amateurs, whether their grounds are small or large. He says that such immediate results need not be looked for as in the breeding of flowers, be- 258 HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING cause the chances for unusually fine fruits from a given number of seedlings are not great. Very many seeds of apples, for example, may be planted, hundreds, even thousands, of them, and not one of the trees which grow from the seeds may bear a fruit any better than the apples which have gone before, while a very large proportion of them are more than likely to be inferior or worthless. Still, he holds that the chances of producing one good new apple are quite sufficient, considering the bearing of such a new fruit upon the commerce of the world, to well warrant one in carrying on the experiments. He recommends for the amateur all the hardier cherries, peaches, apples, pears and plums to choose from for beginning, and also all manner of berries. The seeds or pits from the best fruit obtainable should be kept very slightly moist through the winter for the spring planting. The larger the number of them, the greater the opportunities for in- teresting results. The seeds should be planted in a trench from a half-inch to an inch deep, though no hard and fast rule may be set down applicable to all. It will be necessary to bear in mind the climate in which one lives in se- 259 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE lecting a fruit upon which to work. E.xperi- ments may, however, develop some quite interesting results if the effort is made to produce a fruit which will be hardier than any grown in one’s locality, thus adding, if success- ful, a new feature of value. By the end of the first season the young trees should be large enough for grafting wood. The work of grafting should begin when the spring is first coming or just before the buds are swelling. The tiny branches of the young tree to be grafted should be cut up into pieces about two inches long, with two or three buds on each, and then grafted in the manner noted above. In grafting, care must be taken that seed fruits be grafted upon trees bearing seed fruits, pit fruit upon pit fruits. For example, it will not do to graft a plum upon an apple tree, but upon another plum tree or upon an apricot, almond or peach; an apple graft upon an apple tree, and so on. As indicated in Mr. Burbank’s own work, the larger the number of seeds sown the greater the chances of success. Here, as in the case of flowers, Mr. Burbank points out the 260 ayye AyTovxe OM} OU ‘90U0 ye a4} a[Suts v uodn uMOAS ore spay poapuny aay sev AULT sy ‘syead AuvUL suLvaq 901} v Jo Jed todd, HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING possibilities of producing something of surpas- sing value to the world. Even in case the new fruit created is not better than old fruits of the same class, there is great satisfaction, as with the flowers, in being able to present to a friend a fruit which one has himself made; while there is before one the other possibility of producing a fruit which is to revolutionize, as many of his fruits are revolutionizing, the production of the world. The seedlings could be transplanted from their trench and allowed to grow to maturity upon their own roots, but this would, as a rule, take all the way from six to twenty years, while by grafting them upon a mature tree they may be hurried forward to fruitage in two to four seasons. It would have been impossible for Mr. Burbank to have reached the results he has achieved if he had depended upon first raising his seedlings to the period of bearing fruit before determining their value. He could not have accomplished the ends he has reached in a thousand years. In the way of instruments Mr. Burbank recommends to the amateur any good pruning- knife of fine steel, a smaller knife like 261 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE a budding-knife, a small can for the wax, with a paint brush to put it on the graft-joint, a stock of small strips of white cloth. Other and more elaborate grafting devices can be bought, but Mr. Burbank considers these sufficient, too elaborate an outfit being a hindrance rather than a help. The wax he recommends should be made of four pounds of resin to one pound of beeswax, with enough linseed oil to make it work well. This, when melted up together and allowed to cool, forms a cake from which enough can be broken at any time for the work in hand, and the rest will keep indefinitely. The piece which is broken off should be heated until it is warm enough to flow easily. It should not be too soft or it will run in the warm sun, nor too hard or it will crack. The object is to protect the union of the graft and the tree by means of the wax and the enclosing bandage of cloth, and a very little experience will show when the wax is of just the right consistency. It is well, if there is considerable grafting to be done, to keep the can or pot containing the wax over a lamp or small oil- stove in order to hold it at the proper con- 262 HOW MAY I DO IT, TOO;—GRAFTING sistency.