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 26Jun'51 
 | 3 NoV57 
 
 
Luther Burbank at Sixty-four 
 
 This direct color snapshot of Mr. Burbank was 
 
 made on his sixty-fourth birthday, March 7th, 1013. In 
 
 California, by an act of legislature, Mr. Burbank's birthday is a state 
 
 holiday, called "Burbank Day"— taking the place of Arbor Day 
 
 in other states. On Mr. Burbank's birthday the school 
 
 children of the State plant trees and celebrate 
 
 the occasion with appropriate exercises. 
 
Luther Burbank 
 
 HIS METHODS AND DISCOVERIES AND 
 THEIR PRACTICAL APPLICATION 
 
 PREPARED FROM 
 
 HIS ORIGINAL FIELD NOTES 
 
 COVERING MORE THAN 100,000 EXPERIMENTS 
 
 MADE DURING FORTY YEARS DEVOTED 
 
 TO PLANT IMPROVEMENT 
 
 WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF 
 
 The Luther Burbank Society 
 
 AND ITS 
 ENTIRE MEMBERSHIP 
 
 UNDER THE EDITORIAL DIRECTION OF 
 
 John Whitson and Robert John 
 
 AND 
 
 Henry Smith Williams, M. D., LL. D. 
 
 Volume I 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH 
 
 105 DIRECT COLOR PHOTOGRAPH PRINTS PRODUCED BY A 
 
 NEW PROCESS DEVISED AND PERFECTED FOR 
 
 USE IN THESE VOLUMES 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 LUTHER BURBANK PRESS 
 
 MCMXIV 
 
COPYRIGHT 1914 
 
 BY 
 
 THE LUTHER BUP.CANK SOCIETY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
Volume I — By Chapters 
 
 Foreword Page 3 
 
 I How the Cactus Got Its Spines — 
 And How It Lost Them 
 
 — A Sidelight on _ 
 
 The Importance of Environment , » 
 
 II Twenty-three Potato Seeds — 
 And What They Taught 
 
 — A Glimpse at the „ ,. 
 
 Influence of Heredity OO 
 
 III No Two Living Things 
 Exactly Alike 
 
 — Infinite Ingenuity the Price f-n 
 
 of Variation < 
 
 IV The Rivalry of Plants 
 To Please Us 
 
 — On the Forward March of -. . - — 
 
 Adaptation J-U / 
 
 V Let Us Now Produce a 
 New Pink Daisy 
 
 — A Practical Lesson in 1 ,1 1 
 
 Harnessing Heredity J- 41 
 
 VI Short-Cuts Into the 
 Centuries to Come 
 
 — Better Plants Secured by 111 
 
 Hurrying Evolution X i I 
 
 VII How Far Can Plant 
 Improvement Go ? 
 
 — The Crossroads Where Fact Oil 
 
 and Theory Seem to Part £1.1. 
 
 VIII Some Plants Which Are Begging 
 for Immediate Improvement 
 
 — A Rough Survey of O /f C 
 
 the Possibilities Z4t D 
 
 IX Piecing the Fragments of a 
 Motion Picture Film 
 
 — We Stop to Take OIZ, 
 
 A Backward Glance £ lO 
 
 List of Direct Color Photograph Prints 305 
 
 
Foreword 
 
 Just as a stranger, going into a home for the 
 first time, will see, vividly, either beauties or 
 incongruities which constant association has 
 dimmed in the eyes of the steady occupants, just 
 so, a fresh mind may be better able to visualize 
 the more common processes, all too familiar to 
 me, which I employ in my daily work. 
 
 There are, in fact, many details in my routine 
 which are no less important because they are 
 common to me and which may need some little 
 explanation when described to others in different 
 walks of life. 
 
 I have, therefore, asked my associates, whose 
 new viewpoint should enable them to observe 
 these details in clear perspective, to present in 
 this — the first volume, a survey of the working 
 methods employed; so that the reader may in 
 the first few chapters be brought to the point 
 where he and I may go out into the fields 
 together, and work among our plants with perfect 
 understanding. 
 
 LUTHER BURBANK. 
 
 Santa Rosa, California 
 January 7, 1914. 
 
Armored Against Its Enemies 
 
 The desert cactus shown in the accompanying direct color 
 photograph print portrays a typical arrangement of armor, 
 although many forms of cactus are more heavily spined even than 
 this. In addition to the laige bristling spines which fan out in 
 every direction, there are hidden behind each rosette a 
 bundle of undeveloped spines, numbering often as 
 high as ten thousand to each eye. When the 
 outward spines are cut off, these push 
 their way forward with surpris- 
 ing rapidity to protect the 
 gap in the armor. 
 
How the Cactus Got Its Spines 
 —And How It Lost Them 
 
 A Sidelight on 
 The Importance of Environment 
 
 IT IS the acre-and-a-quarter patch of spineless 
 cactus on Luther Burbank's experiment farm 
 which first strikes the visitor's eye. In the 
 same yard there are 2500 other experiments under 
 way — new flowers, fruits, vegetables, trees and 
 plants of all descriptions such as man has never 
 before seen, but the velvet slabbed cactus — freed 
 from its thorns — seems more than a plant trans- 
 formation, it seems a miracle. Since the spineless 
 cactus represents the typical Burbank boldness 
 of conception, and reflects the typical Burbank 
 skillful execution, we may as well begin with it. 
 
 It occurred to Luther Burbank one day that 
 every plant growing on the desert was either 
 bitter, or poisonous, or spiny. It was this simple 
 observation which gave him the idea of this new 
 
 [Volume I — Chapter I] 
 
 UB*^ 
 
 ».c- sittt 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 plant — a plant which already has shown its 
 ability to outdo alfalfa five to one, and which 
 promises to support our cattle on what have been 
 the waste places of the world; so that our 
 ranges may be turned into gardens to produce the 
 vegetable sustenance for a multiplying population. 
 
 Let us look at the life story of the cactus as 
 it unfolded itself to Luther Burbank when he 
 realized the importance of the simple fact that 
 desert plants are usually bitter, poisonous, or 
 spiny. 
 
 "Here are plants," thought he, "which have the 
 hardiness to live, and to thrive, and to perpetuate 
 themselves, under conditions in which other 
 plants would die in a day or a month. 
 
 "Here are plants which, although there may 
 be not a drop of rain for a year, two years, or even 
 ten, still contrive to get enough moisture out of 
 the deep soil and out of the air, to build up a 
 structure which, by weight, is ninety-two per cent, 
 water — plants which contrive to absorb from the 
 scorching desert, and to protect from the withering 
 sun, enough moisture to make them nearly as 
 juicy as watermelons. 
 
 "Here are plants which are veritable wells of 
 water, growing in a land where there are no 
 springs, or brooks — nor even clouds to encourage 
 the hope of a cooling rain; here are plants which 
 
 [8] 
 
Every Inch Protected 
 
 Not only in the form of cactus shown here, but in 
 
 practically every form, the spines are so arranged as to protect 
 
 every inch of the surface. It will be seen that it would scarcely be 
 
 possible to touch a finger to the skin of the cactus plant above, 
 
 so completely does the armor protect it. This form of 
 
 cactus also gives an interesting illustration of the 
 
 fact that away back in its history, the plant, 
 
 instead of having flat slabs, had round 
 
 stalks. In this picture the three 
 
 joints of the round stalk 
 
 can be clearly seen. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 are rich in nutriment for man and for beast, here 
 in the desert where the demand for food is the 
 most acute — and the supply of it the most scanty. 
 
 "And here they are, ruined for every useful 
 purpose, by the bitterness which makes them 
 inedible, or the poison which sickens or kills, or 
 the spiny armor which places their store of nutri- 
 ment and moisture beyond reach. 
 
 "There must be some reason for that bitterness, 
 that poison, those spines. 
 
 "What other reason could there be than that 
 these are Nature's provisions for self defense? 
 
 "Here are the sagebrush, with a bitterness as 
 irritant, almost, as the sting of a bee, the euphorbia 
 as poisonous as a snake, the cactus as well 
 armored as a porcupine — and for the same reason 
 that bees have stings, that snakes have fangs, 
 that porcupines have arrow-like spines — for self 
 protection from some stronger enemy which seeks 
 
 to destroy." 
 
 ***** 
 
 Self preservation comes before self sacrifice, 
 apparently, in plant life just as it does in human 
 life. 
 
 The plum trees in our orchards outdo each 
 other in bearing fruit to please us; the geraniums 
 in our dooryards compete to see which may give 
 us the greatest delight. 
 
 [10] 
 
ON ENVIRONMENT 
 
 But may it not be because, for generations, we 
 have fostered them, and nurtured them, and cared 
 for them? 
 
 May it not be because we have made it easy for 
 them to live and to thrive? 
 
 May it not be because we have relieved them 
 of the responsibility of defense and reproduction, 
 that they have rewarded our kindly care by 
 fruiting and blooming, not for their own selfish 
 ends, but for us? 
 
 No man was ever kind to a cactus; no man ever 
 cultivated the sagebrush; no man ever cherished 
 the poisonous euphorbia. 
 
 Is it, then, to be wondered at that the primal 
 instinct of self preservation has prevailed — that 
 what might have been a food plant equal to the 
 plum transformed itself into a wild porcupine 
 among plants? 
 
 That what might have been as useful to the 
 horse as hay changed its nature and became bitter, 
 woody, inedible? 
 
 That what might have been a welcome friend 
 to the weary desert traveler grew up, instead, into 
 a poisonous enemy? 
 
 ***** 
 
 "If the bitterness, the poison and the spines 
 are means of self defense," thought Mr. Burbank, 
 "then they must be means which have been 
 
 [11] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 acquired. The plants were here before there were 
 animals to feed on or destroy them, so there must 
 have been a time in their history when they had 
 no need for such defense. 
 
 "It must be true, then, that away back in their 
 ancestry there were desert sagebrushes which 
 were not bitter, desert euphorbias which were not 
 poisonous, and desert cactus plants which had 
 not even the suspicion of a spine. It could only 
 be the long continued danger of destruction 
 which could have produced so radical a means of 
 defense. 
 
 "We have, then, but to take these plants back 
 to a period in their history before defense had 
 become a problem — in order to produce an edible 
 sagebrush, a non-poisonous euphorbia, a spineless 
 cactus." 
 
 How, in a dozen years, Mr. Burbank carried the 
 cactus back ages in its ancestry, how he proved 
 beyond question by planting a thousand cactus 
 seeds that the spiny cactus descended from a 
 smooth slabbed line of forefathers — how he 
 brought forth a new race without the suspicion 
 of a spine, and with a velvet skin, and how he so 
 re-established these old characteristics that the 
 result was fixed and permanent — all of these 
 things will be explained in due course where the 
 discoveries involved and the working methods 
 
 [12] 
 
A Relic of Past Ages 
 
 The color photograph print shown above is a six time 
 
 enlargement of a cactus seedling just after it has poked its head 
 
 above ground. It will be noticed that the root has already shown its 
 
 tendency to go deep in the ground and that this, together with the 
 
 spine-covered upright stalk or slab, reflects the characteristics of 
 
 immediate ancestry. The more interesting fact, however, and the fact 
 
 which proved to Mr. Burbank's mind his theory of the original 
 
 spinelessness of cactus, is to be found in the two smooth leaves 
 
 extending from the base of the small thorny slab. These leaves, 
 
 though rudimentary, and dropping off a few days after the cactus is 
 
 above the ground, are reminders of a former age when all cactus 
 
 plants had stalks or leaves that were as smooth as these. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 employed may be made applicable, as well, to the 
 improvement of other plants. 
 
 It suffices, here, to say that, beginning with his 
 simple observation and reading the history of the 
 cactus from its present-day appearance, he was 
 able to see outlined before him the method by 
 which a plant yielding rich food and forage has 
 been produced, which, more than any other plant, 
 promises to solve the present-day problem of 
 higher living costs. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "But, Mr. Burbank," asked a visitor at the Santa 
 Rosa Experiment Farm, "do you mean that the 
 cactus foresaw the coming of an enemy which was 
 to destroy it? Is it believable that a plant, like 
 a nation expecting war, could armor itself in 
 advance of the necessity? And if the cactus did 
 not know that an enemy was later to destroy it, 
 would it not have been destroyed by the enemy 
 before it had the opportunity of preparing a means 
 of defense?" 
 
 Let us look into the history of the plant as it 
 revealed itself to Mr. Burbank and see the answer 
 
 to these questions. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The likelihood is that parts of Nevada, Arizona, 
 Utah and Northern Mexico were once a great 
 inland sea — that the deserts now there were the 
 
 [14] 
 
ON ENVIRONMENT 
 
 bed of that sea before it began its long process of 
 leakage or evaporation. 
 
 In these regions, so far as is known, the North 
 American cactus seems to have originated. 
 
 Back in the ages before the evaporation of the 
 inland sea was complete, the heat and the moisture 
 and the chemical constituents of the sandy soil 
 combined to give many plants an opportunity to 
 thrive. Among these was the cactus, which was 
 an entirely different plant in appearance from 
 the cactus of today, no doubt, with well defined 
 stalks and a multitude of leaves, each as broad as 
 a man's head. 
 
 As the heat, which had lifted away the inland 
 sea, began to parch its bottom, the cactus, with the 
 same tendency that is shown by every other plant 
 and every other living thing, began to adapt itself 
 to the changing conditions. 
 
 It gradually dropped its leaves in order to 
 prevent too rapid transpiration of the precious 
 life-supporting moisture. It sent its roots deeper 
 and deeper into the damp sub-stratum which the 
 sun had not yet reached. It thickened its stalks 
 into broad slabs. It lowered its main source of 
 life and sustenance far beneath the surface of the 
 ground and found it possible, thus, to persist and 
 to prosper. 
 
 Perhaps there were, in the making of the 
 
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ON ENVIRONMENT 
 
 desert, other plants not so adaptable as the cactus, 
 plants which perished and of which man has no 
 knowledge or record. 
 
 And so, we may assume, the cactus and those 
 other plants which adapted themselves to the new 
 conditions crowded out those which were unable 
 to fit themselves to survive, and covered the drying 
 plains with their verdure. 
 
 But there came animals to the bed of this 
 one-time sea, attracted, perhaps, by the cactus and 
 its contemporaries, which offered them food of 
 satisfying flavor and easy access. 
 
 Of the plants which had survived the evapora- 
 tion of the sea and the heat of the broiling sun, 
 there were many, quite likely, which failed to 
 survive the new danger — the onslaught of the 
 animals. 
 
 Species by species the vegetation of the desert 
 was thinned out by the elements and by the 
 animals; and the animals, with plant life to 
 feed on, multiplied themselves in ever increasing 
 hordes, till perhaps the cactus was but one of a 
 dozen plants to survive. 
 
 Then came the fight of the cactus to outdo the 
 beasts which sought to devour it — the fight as a 
 family, and the fight within the family to see which 
 of its individuals should be found fit to persist. 
 
 Of a million cactus plants eaten to the ground 
 
 [17] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 by ravenously hungry antelopes, we will say — 
 antelopes which had increased in numbers year 
 by year while their food supply year by year was 
 relentlessly dwindling — of these million plants 
 gnawed down to the roots, perhaps but a thousand 
 or two had the stamina to throw out new leaves — 
 and to try over again. 
 
 But just as in its previous experience, the 
 cactus had changed the character of its stalk, so 
 now it undertook another change — the acquisition 
 of an armor. 
 
 This armor at first consisted of nothing but a 
 soft protuberance, a modified fruit bud or leaf, 
 perhaps, ineffectual in warding off the onslaughts 
 of the hungry animals. 
 
 So, of the thousand or two left out of the 
 million, there may have been but a hundred which 
 were able to ward off destruction. 
 
 The hundred, stronger than the rest, though 
 eaten to the ground, were able still to send up new 
 leaves, and with each new crop the hairs became 
 stiffer and longer, the protuberances harder and 
 more pointed, until finally, if there were even only 
 one surviving representative of the race, there was 
 developed a cactus which was effectually armored 
 against its every animal enemy. 
 
 One such surviving cactus, as transformed 
 throughout ages and ages of time, meeting new 
 
 [18] 
 
As Smooth as Velvet 
 
 A direct color photograph print of four cactus leaves after Mr. 
 
 Burbank had taken the plant backward in its evolution to 
 
 spinelessness. Not only have the outward spines vanished, but all of 
 
 the thousands of rudimentary spines, bundled up inside, as well. 
 
 Contrasted with its parent varieties, it is not only possible to handle 
 
 spineless cactus with impunity, but it is so soft and velvety that 
 
 it can be safely rubbed over the face. Either in the form of 
 
 slabs, or cut into strips, or ground into meal, cattle 
 
 instinctively prefer cactus to any other food. The 
 
 elephants from a passing circus showed an 
 
 immediate liking for the new food and 
 
 vigorously trumpeted for more. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 conditions with changes so slight as to be almost 
 imperceptible, but gradually accommodating itself 
 to the conditions under which it lived and grew — 
 one such survivor out of all the billions of 
 cactus plants that have ever grown, would have 
 been sufficient to have covered the deserts of the 
 world with its progeny — to have produced all of 
 the thorny cactus which we have in the world 
 
 today. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "You see," said Mr. Burbank, "the cactus did 
 not prepare in advance to meet an enemy — it 
 simply adapted itself to changing conditions as 
 those conditions arose. First, surviving the desert 
 drought and the broiling sun, it threw its roots 
 deep so that its main source of life was below 
 ground. Then, attacked by an enemy which ate 
 off the leaves above the surface, it still had life 
 and resistance to try again. Ineffectually, at first, it 
 began to build its armor, but each discouragement 
 proved but the incentive to another attempt. It 
 is a vivid picture: the whole cactus family in 
 a death struggle for supremacy over an enemy 
 which threatens its very life — millions and 
 millions of the family perishing in the struggle, 
 and perhaps but one victorious survivor left to 
 start a new and armored race. 
 
 "It is wonderful, too; but, whenever we plant a 
 
 [20] 
 
ON ENVIRONMENT 
 
 cactus slab today we see evidences of adaptability 
 more wonderful than this. 
 
 "The slab of cactus is a brilliant green as we 
 put it in the ground. It is flat, of an oval shape, 
 an inch or less in thickness. Its internal structure 
 is of soft, mushy fiber, mostly water. 
 
 "As that slab sends down roots, it begins to 
 prepare itself to bear the burden of the other slabs 
 which are to grow above it. 
 
 "The thin, flat shape thickens out until it is 
 almost spherical; thus presenting a curved surface 
 in four directions instead of in two, it braces itself 
 against the winds which will play with the new 
 slabs far above it. 
 
 "Its mushy wood fibers grow tough and 
 resistant; it loses much of its watery character. 
 
 "It changes in color, from green to brown; it 
 loses its velvety skin and develops a bark like 
 that of a tree. 
 
 "Within a year after planting, this cactus 
 slab will have changed in appearance and in 
 characteristics to fit itself to the new conditions 
 which surround it. 
 
 "It will have changed its structure to bear 
 weight and stand strains. It will have modified its 
 internal mechanism to transmit moisture instead 
 of to store it. It will have remodeled its outer 
 skin to protect itself from the ground animals from 
 
 [21] 
 
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ON ENVIRONMENT 
 
 which, when it wavS a slab high up on another 
 
 cactus plant, it knew and feared no danger!" 
 
 ***** 
 
 Is it more wonderful that, unseen by us, a 
 plant should have adapted itself to the desert 
 and, through the ages, have armored itself against 
 an enemy, than that, before our eyes, in a single 
 year, it should meet changed conditions in an 
 equally effective way? 
 
 Is it more wonderful that it should grow spines 
 than that it should grow slabs which in turn have 
 the power to grow other slabs? 
 
 Is not the really wonderful thing the fact that 
 
 it grows at all? 
 
 ***** 
 
 The cactus is one of the most plastic of plants — 
 educated up to this, perhaps, by the hardships 
 and battles through which its ancestry has fought 
 its way. 
 
 A slip cut from a rose bush, for example, 
 must be planted in carefully prepared ground of 
 a suitable kind, at a certain time of the year, with 
 regard to moisture and temperature — it must be 
 watched and cared for until it takes root and 
 begins for itself. Under continued cultivation, the 
 rose bush has lost some of its ability to make its 
 own way. 
 
 But the cactus, having come up from a line 
 
 [23] 
 
/•s 
 
 4 s * 
 
 LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 tV^ of warriors with every hand against it, needs no 
 
 ^» such care. Every one of the fifty or more wart-like 
 
 &*• eyes on its every slab is competent to throw out 
 
 a root, a fruit, or another slab — whichever the 
 
 occasion seems to warrant. 
 
 Lay a cactus slab on hard ground, unscratched 
 by a hoe, and the eyes of its under side will throw 
 long yellow roots downward, while the eyes on 
 the upper side await their opportunity, once the 
 slab is rooted, to throw their other slabs and their 
 blossoms upward. 
 
 As the tiny buds grow from the eyes, it is 
 impossible by sight or microscopic examination to 
 determine which will be roots, which will be 
 fruits, or which will be other slabs. It is as though 
 the cactus, inured by hardship and prepared for 
 any emergency, waits until the very last possible 
 moment to settle upon the best-suited means of 
 reproduction — as though the bud, having started, 
 becomes a root if it finds encouragement for roots, 
 or a fruit if seed seems desirable, or an upward 
 slab if this can be supported. 
 
 Nor does its attempt at reproduction require 
 much encouragement. Fifty young cactus slabs 
 laid on a burlap-covered wooden shelf four feet 
 above ground were found to have thrown long 
 roots down through the burlap and through the 
 cracks of the boards within a few days. 
 
 [24] 
 
After a Year in the Dark 
 
 The big cactus leaf shown here lay forgotten for one year, in 
 
 a dark closet in Mr. Burbank's old homestead. By accident, the 
 
 door of the closet was left open for a few days, allowed a faint light 
 
 to reach it, and the slab responded by throwing out a large but 
 
 sickly looking baby slab toward the light. During its year in 
 
 the dark, this slab of course had no moisture except what 
 
 was contained within itself and the only evidence of 
 
 its deprivation is shown by the fact that at the 
 
 bottom of the slab and in other spots the 
 
 fiber has begun to turn to wood. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 A cactus plant pulled from the ground and 
 tied by a string to the branch of a tree remained 
 hanging in the air for six years and eight months. 
 During this time it had no source of nourishment, 
 and its slabs withered and turned brown. But, 
 planted again by sticking one of its slabs six 
 inches in the ground, it immediately took root, 
 and within a few weeks began to throw out new 
 blossoms and slabs. 
 
 Another detached cactus slab, long forgotten 
 in a closet, and after having been in the dark 
 for more than a year, was found to have thrown 
 out a sickly looking baby slab when the closet 
 door was left open for a few days. 
 
 The more the adaptability of the present- 
 day cactus and its tenacious hold on life are 
 observed, the easier it becomes to understand 
 its fight against a devouring enemy which lived 
 during the desert-forming age, and to see the 
 
 origin of the thorny cactus of today. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Nor is the cactus the only desert plant which 
 shows evidences of such a struggle. 
 
 The goldenrods of the desert are more bitter 
 than the goldenrods of the plains. 
 
 The wormwood of the desert is more bitter 
 even than the wormwood which grows where there 
 have been fewer enemies. 
 
 [26] 
 
A Typical Cactus Flower 
 
 However much the cactus offends by the 
 
 ugliness of its grim armor, it more than makes up by 
 
 the beauty of its flower. Most cactus flowers are large, delicate and 
 
 of brilliant color; ranging from perfect whites to deep 
 
 reds — from bright yellows to rich purples. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 The yuccas, the aloes, the euphorbias, all have 
 counterparts in their families which, needing less 
 protection, show less bitterness, less poison, fewer 
 spines. 
 
 And even rare cactus plants from protected 
 localities, and those of the less edible varieties, 
 give evidence, by the fewness of their spines, that 
 their family struggle has been less intense than 
 the struggle of the cactus which found itself 
 
 stranded in the bed of a former inland sea. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Plants which have shown even greater adaptive 
 powers than the cactus are to be found in the well 
 known algae family. 
 
 One branch of this family furnishes an apt 
 illustration of the scant nourishment to which a 
 plant may adapt itself. 
 
 Microscopic in size, it lives its life on the upper 
 crust of the Arctic snow storing up enough energy 
 in the summer, when the sun's rays liquefy a thin 
 film of water on the icy surface, to sustain life in 
 a dormant stage during the northern winter's six 
 months of night. 
 
 With nothing but the moisture yielded from 
 the snow, and what nutriment it can gather from 
 the air, this plant, called the red snow plant, 
 multiplies and prospers to the extent that it covers 
 whole hillsides of snow like a blanket — covers 
 
 [28] 
 
ON ENVIRONMENT 
 
 them so completely that the reddish color of the 
 plant, imparted to the snow, first gave rise to the 
 tales of far northern travelers as to the color of the 
 snowfall and explained the apparent phenomenon 
 of red snow. 
 
 Another division of this family, going to the 
 opposite extreme, thrives in the waters of Arrow- 
 head Sulphur Springs in California — lives its life 
 and reproduces itself in water so hot that eggs may 
 be easily cooked in it. 
 
 Contrasted with these microscopic members, 
 one thriving on the Arctic snows, the other in water 
 at the boiling point, there is still another member 
 of this family which has become the largest plant 
 in the world. This, the gigantic seaweed of the 
 Sargasso Sea, is taller and larger than the greatest 
 giant redwood which California has produced. 
 
 And so on; some of this family of the algae 
 grow on and in animals, some on other plants, 
 some on iron, some on dry rocks, some in fresh 
 water, and some in the salt seas. 
 
 The monkey-puzzle tree, a form of which is 
 illustrated by a direct color photograph print, 
 shows an adaptability to environment as striking 
 as that of the cactus — although for an entirely 
 different purpose. 
 
 At the top of the monkey-puzzle tree, so called, 
 
 [29] 
 
The Monkey-Puzzle Tree 
 
 A striking example of spines for protection, this tree 
 
 bears but few seeds and protects them, with a spiny armor, 
 
 from destruction by monkeys. The nuts are borne at, or very near 
 
 the top, and the spines are so sharp that it is impossible for 
 
 any animal to climb the tree. Where the cactus 
 
 spines are designed to protect the plant itself, 
 
 the monkey-puzzle spines are designed to 
 
 protect the offspring of the plant, 
 
 represented by its seed. 
 
 
 V 
 
 f 
 
ON ENVIRONMENT 
 
 are borne several nuts containing the seed of the 
 plant. 
 
 In the case of the cactus the thorns were thrown 
 out to protect the plant itself from destruction, but 
 in the case of the monkey-puzzle tree the animals 
 threatened not the tree itself but its offspring — its 
 nuts were so highly prized by the monkeys, and 
 their number was so few, that it was forced to take 
 protective measures to keep its seed out of the 
 reach of enemies. 
 
 From this we begin to see that each plant has 
 its own family individuality, its own family 
 personality. Some plants, in order to insure 
 reproduction, produce hundreds or thousands of 
 seeds, relying on the fact that in an over-supply 
 a few will likely be saved and germinated; while 
 other plants producing only a few seeds protect 
 them with hard shells or bitter coverings, or, as in 
 the case of the monkey-puzzle tree, with sharp 
 
 spines which make access impossible. 
 
 ***** 
 
 In the deep canyons of California's mountains 
 there grows a member of the lily family, the 
 trillium. 
 
 At the bottom of these canyons there are places 
 where the sunshine strikes but one side. The 
 flowers on the shady side of the canyons are larger, 
 and the leaves of the plants are broader, and the 
 
 [31] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 bulbs are nearer the surface than those of the 
 plants which grow where the sun gets at them. 
 
 On the other side of the same canyons the 
 bulbs grow deep in the soil, and the leaves and the 
 blossoms transform themselves to protect their 
 moisture from the sun. 
 
 Which is all that the cactus did when the sea 
 
 was turned into a desert. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Along the Pacific coast from Oregon well down 
 into California, there grows a common wild flower 
 of the pipewort family. 
 
 Inland a little way, say ten or fifteen miles, the 
 stalk of this plant is smooth and with hardly the 
 suspicion of a hair. But along the shore, where 
 the northwest winds pick up all of the finer 
 particles from the beach and form a sand blast, 
 the plant has developed a stalk so covered with 
 hairs that it is as woolly, almost, as a sheep — 
 perfectly protected against the sand-enemy. 
 
 Which is all that the cactus did when the 
 antelopes came to destroy it. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Let the cactus, battle-scarred and inured to 
 hardship, teach us our first great lesson in plant 
 improvement: 
 
 That our plants are what they are because 
 of environment; that simply by observing their 
 
 [32] 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 structures, their tendencies, their habits, their indi- 
 vidual peculiarities, we can read their histories 
 back ages and ages before there were men and 
 animals — read it, almost, as an open book; that 
 our plants have lived their lives not by quiet 
 rote and rule, but in a turmoil of emergency; 
 and, just as they have always changed with their 
 surroundings, so now, day by day, they continue 
 to change to fit themselves to new environments; 
 and that we, to bring forth new characteristics in 
 them, to transform them to meet our ideals, have 
 but to surround them with new environments — not 
 at haphazard, but along the lines of our definite 
 desires. 
 
 — 7s not the really 
 wonderful thing 
 the fact that the 
 plants grow at all? 
 
Twenty-Three Potato Seeds 
 and 
 
 What They Taught 
 
 A Glimpse at 
 the Influence of Heredity 
 
 THE springtime buds unfold into leaves 
 before our eyes — without our seeing them 
 unfold. We have grown accustomed to 
 look for bare limbs in March; to find them hidden 
 by heavy foliage in May; and because the process 
 is slow and tedious, and because it goes on always, 
 everywhere about us, we are apt to count it 
 commonplace. 
 
 Just as we can understand that the tree in our 
 yard, responding to its environment — to the April 
 showers, to the warm noons of May, to the heat 
 of summer and to the final chill of fall — has 
 completed a transformation in a year, so, too, 
 can we more easily understand the gradual trans- 
 formation of the cactus in an age. So, too, can 
 we realize that the individual steps between the 
 first ineffectual hairy protuberance, and the final 
 
 [Volume I — Chapter II] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 spiny armor, each a stronger attempt to respond 
 to environment, were so gradual as to be almost 
 
 imperceptible. 
 
 ***** 
 
 But those rudimentary, half formed leaves 
 which come forth from every eye of the cactus 
 slab before the thorns or fruits come out — those 
 leaves which, as if seeing that they have no useful 
 purpose, as if realizing that they are relics, 
 only, of a bygone day, drop off and die — what 
 environment has acted to bring them forth? 
 
 And those two smooth slabs that push out when 
 the tiny seedling has just poked its thorny head 
 above the ground — to what environment do they 
 respond? 
 
 How shall we account for this tendency in a 
 plant to jump out of its own surroundings, and 
 out of the surroundings of its parents, and their 
 parents and those before them — and to respond 
 to the influences which surrounded an extinct 
 ancestor — to hark back to the days when the 
 desert was the moist bottom of an evaporating 
 sea and before the animals came to destroy? 
 
 * * w * * 
 
 A group of scientists were chatting with Luther 
 Burbank when a chance remark on heredity led 
 one of them to tell this bear story. 
 
 It seemed, so the story ran, that a baby bear 
 
 [36] 
 
ON HEREDITY 
 
 had been picked up by miners within a few days 
 after its birth — before its eyes had opened. The 
 cub, in fact, was so small that it was carried 
 several miles to the camp tied in the sleeve of 
 the coat of one of the miners. 
 
 Raised to adult bearhood by these miners, 
 without ever having seen another bear — relieved of 
 the necessity of finding its own food and removed 
 from the wild environment of its ancestors — this 
 bear became as thoroughly domesticated, almost, 
 as a tabby cat. 
 
 What would such a bear do if thrown on its 
 own resources? Would it have to begin at the 
 beginning to learn bear-lore? 
 
 Bears are great salmon fishers, for example. 
 
 But is this skill taught by the mother to the 
 baby bear — or is it a part of every bear at birth? 
 That was the question of interest. 
 
 When the animal had arrived at maturity, it 
 was taken, one day, to a shallow salmon stream. 
 
 Here was a bear which had never fished for 
 salmon, and had never tasted fish; a bear which, 
 if bears have a language, had not received a 
 moment of instruction in self support; a bear 
 which, taken before its eyes were open, had never 
 seen its mother, had never known an influence 
 outside of the artificial atmosphere of the mining 
 camp. 
 
 [37] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Brought to the salmon stream, however, there 
 was not an instant of delay; it glanced about, 
 located a natural point of vantage, straddled the 
 brook with its face down-stream, and bending 
 over, with upraised right paw, waited for the 
 salmon to come. 
 
 It did, unhesitatingly, just what any normal 
 wild-raised bear would have done. 
 
 With wonderful dexterity it was able to scoop 
 the onrushing salmon out of the stream and to 
 throw them in an even pile on the bank with a 
 single motion. 
 
 As other bears would do, this domesticated 
 bruin stood over the stream until it had accumu- 
 lated a considerable pile of the salmon on the 
 bank. 
 
 Going to this pile it quickly sorted over the 
 fish, making now two piles instead of one — with 
 all the male salmon in one pile, and all the female 
 salmon in the other. 
 
 Then, with its sharp claw, it proceeded to split 
 open the female salmon and to extract the roe, 
 which it ate with relish. This consumed, it 
 finished its meal on the other meat of the fish. 
 
 Untaught, it recognized salmon as food; dis- 
 tinguished males from females; knew the roe as 
 a delicacy. Unpracticed, it knew, instantly, just 
 how to fish for salmon and how to find the roe. 
 
 [38] 
 
An Ancestral Secret 
 
 When the rapid growing eucalyptus tree pushes out its 
 
 leaves it discloses one of the secrets of its ancestry. Some of 
 
 the leaves, like those at the top of the branch pictured above, are 
 
 narrow and long. Others, lower down, are much broader. On a single 
 
 tree it is common to find five or six different kinds of leaves seeming, 
 
 when laid side by side, as though they must have come from separate 
 
 plants. The history of the eucalyptus, as disclosed by its leaves, its 
 
 quick growth, and other characteristics, is that one time it was an herb 
 
 — perhaps an annual. To fit themselves to some new environment, its 
 
 ancestors succeeded in establishing themselves as perennials. But this 
 
 change ivas so recent that the evidences of the transition are still 
 
 to be found in the leaves of all young eucalyptus trees today, 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "Right here on this experiment farm," spoke 
 up Mr. Burbank, "you might find hundreds of 
 evidences of heredity more striking than that — 
 more striking because they are the evidences of 
 heredity in plant life, instead of in animal life. 
 
 "Right here," said he, "you will find plants 
 which show tendencies unquestionably inherited 
 from a line of ancestry going back perhaps ten 
 thousand years or more — tendencies, some of 
 them, which now seem strangely out of place 
 because the conditions which gave rise to them 
 in their ancestors no longer exist; tendencies like 
 those of the cactus and the blackberry to protect 
 themselves from wild beasts when wild beasts are 
 no longer enemies; tendencies to deck themselves 
 in colors designed to attract the insects of a 
 forgotten age — insects which, perhaps, no man has 
 ever seen. 
 
 "Where some incredulity might be expressed 
 as to whether the bear had not actually been taught 
 to fish for salmon, or seen another bear perform 
 the act, there can be no such question in the case 
 of heredity in plants. 
 
 "Here," said he, as a bed of sweet peas was 
 approached, "is a plant which has inherited the 
 climbing, twining tendency. 
 
 "That is an evidence that, at some time 
 back in its history, this plant has probably been 
 
 [40] 
 
ON HEREDITY 
 
 crowded for room. Plants which grow high do so 
 usually because, at some stage in their existence, 
 they have had to grow high to get the sun and the 
 air which they need. Low-lying plants, like the 
 pumpkin for example, give evidence that they have 
 always enjoyed plenty of space in which to spread 
 out. 
 
 "The bear of your story may^ have slipped 
 away, unknown to its keepers, and seen another 
 bear fish for salmon; but if these tendencies and 
 traits, and if the ability to perform the feats 
 necessary for existence are not passed down from 
 mother to son — if they do not come down through 
 the line of ancestry, if all of the old environments 
 of the past have not accumulated into trans- 
 missible heredity, what enables that sweet pea to 
 
 twine around the stake?" 
 
 ***** 
 
 "A closer observation of the sweet pea will 
 show us that its tendrils are really modified leaves, 
 produced, like the spines of the cactus, by ages of 
 environment which, added up, combine to make 
 heredity; and that their actual sensitiveness to 
 touch is so highly developed that they almost 
 instantly encircle and hold fast to any suitable 
 support within their reach. 
 
 "It would be interesting to take a motion 
 picture of a sweet pea as it grows, as similar 
 
 [41] 
 
Unblended Heredities 
 
 The two dahlias shown in this direct color photograph 
 
 print illustrate the freaks which heredity sometimes plays. 
 
 Sometimes, when two widely separated strains of heredity are brought 
 
 together in a single plant, or animal, the result is a blend; but 
 
 in these dahlias, as will be seen, some of the petals take 
 
 back to one line of ancestry while others take back, 
 
 equally distinctly, to another. No man can 
 
 predict the outcome when two separate 
 
 strains of heredity are mixed. 
 
ON HEREDITY 
 
 motion pictures have been taken; making our 
 separate snapshots one every three minutes 
 instead of fifteen or sixteen to the second, so that 
 the reel would cover a period of fifteen days; then, 
 with a fifteen day history recorded on our film, to 
 run it through the projecting lantern at the rate 
 of fifteen or sixteen pictures to the second, thus 
 showing in seven or eight minutes the motions 
 of growth which actually took fifteen days to 
 accomplish; on the screen before us, with quick, 
 darting motions, we should see the sweet pea 
 wriggle and writhe and squirm — we should see it 
 wave its tendrils around in the air, feeling out 
 every inch within its reach for possible supports 
 on which to twine. 
 
 "We should see, by condensing half a month 
 of its life into an eight minute reel, that this sweet 
 pea has inherited an actual intelligence — slow in 
 its operation, but positive, certain — an inherited 
 intelligence which would be surprising, even, in 
 
 an animal." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "All through plant life we find these undeniable 
 evidences of heredity. 
 
 "I have here, for example, two tiny seedlings 
 which look almost alike. They are distantly 
 related. One is the acacia and the other the 
 sensitive plant. 
 
 [43] 
 

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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "Much as these plants look alike, they bear 
 witness to the fact that they have within them two 
 entirely different strains of heredity. 
 
 "The acacia will permit us to touch it and 
 handle it without showing signs of disturbance. 
 
 "But its cousin, in the same soil, and of the 
 same size, immediately folds up its leaves, in self 
 protection, at the slightest touch. 
 
 "From this we read the fact that one branch 
 of this family has found it necessary to perfect a 
 form of self defense, while the other has had no 
 such experience in its life history." 
 ***** 
 
 "I have been much interested lately in an 
 experiment with common clover — in producing 
 clover leaves with wonderful markings. 
 
 "The only way in which I can account for the 
 markings with which some clover leaves will 
 bedeck themselves is that, in the heredity of the 
 plant, there was a time when, not being poisonous 
 itself, it tried to simulate the appearance of some 
 poisonous plant, to protect itself from insects. 
 
 "At first thought, it might require a stretch of 
 the imagination to understand how this could 
 be — yet a closer inquiry shows that the process 
 was as gradual and as surely progressive as the 
 transformation of the cactus. 
 
 "In clover, as in other plants, there has always 
 
 [46] 
 
Simulating a Poisonous Look 
 
 The clover leaves shown above reveal a strange inherited 
 
 tendency. It is Mr. Burbank's belief that the white markings 
 
 and the black splotches, which can be readily distinguished, represent 
 
 an attempt on the part of the plant to simulate a poisonous look, 
 
 as a means of self protection. Although the tendency to 
 
 protect themselves with these warning streaks and 
 
 blotches of color is very strong, yet in all of 
 
 his experiments, Mr. Burbank has not 
 
 found a single clover plant which 
 
 was actually poisonous. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 been variation — some few individual clover plants 
 have always had the white and black markings. 
 
 "At some time in the history of the plant those 
 without the markings have been destroyed, and so, 
 responding to this new environment, the markings 
 became more and more pronounced until now we 
 have not only white triangular markings, but ugly 
 black splotches going clear through the leaf. 
 
 "From these markings we can read the history 
 of the clover — most of the family having plain 
 leaves inherited from an ancestry which found no 
 need to protect itself from an enemy — with an 
 occasional outcropping of poisonous-looking color 
 splotches — the inheritance of scattering environ- 
 ments in which self protection was necessary." 
 ***** 
 
 "Or we might consider the ice-plant, so called, 
 which protects itself from the heat of the sun by 
 surrounding itself with tiny water drops which 
 have the appearance and serve the same purpose 
 as icicles; or the wild lettuce, known sometimes 
 as the compass plant, which turns its leaves north 
 and south so that only their edges are reached 
 by the sun; or any of a number of other strange 
 protective measures which plants have perfected — 
 all manifestations which would be impossible if 
 heredity were not an ever present, controlling 
 influence. 
 
 [48] 
 
A Living Refrigerator 
 
 In this direct color photograph print it will be seen that 
 
 the stems and leaves are covered with formations which appear 
 
 to be tiny icicles. The plant is known as the ice plant, and the 
 
 icicles, in fact, are stored up moisture which it saves up against 
 
 the heat of the sun. The need for this extra moisture 
 
 is not apparent where this plant now grows, and 
 
 it is reasoned, therefore, that the plant 
 
 has been stranded, at some time or 
 
 another in its history, in some 
 
 unusually hot, dry climate. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "We have, too, in many parts of the country 
 plants which have learned to snare and trap 
 insects and even animals, and to digest them and 
 to live on them. 
 
 "Among these carnivorous plants are the com- 
 mon pitcher plants, and the Venus fly trap. 
 
 "The pitcher plants, instead of belonging only 
 to one family, are to be found in a number of 
 different families, thus showing that environment 
 has produced a similar strain of heredity in 
 separate kinds of plants which are not kin to 
 each other. 
 
 "One of the pitcher plants which grows abun- 
 dantly in the moist places of the Sierras and in 
 northern California even catches frogs, small 
 animals and birds. The plant seems especially 
 devised to lure the animals into its pitcher. Above 
 the pitcher is a little lattice and an opening, like a 
 window, through which the light can shine. The 
 insects and the animals see a haven from the sun 
 and rain, and as they go in, there are little fingers 
 on the plant which push them along and keep 
 them from coming back. 
 
 "Once securely in the trap, the plant secretes a 
 digestive juice, like our own gastric juice, and 
 absorbs the animal life as food. 
 
 "In these traps it is common to find all kinds 
 of insects — including the undigested wings and 
 
 [50] 
 
This Plant Eats Insects 
 
 The pitcher plant, shown here, which grows in the high 
 
 mountains of California, has perfected an ingenious contrivance 
 
 for catching and digesting insects. At the top of the pitcher, so called, 
 
 seen above, there is an opaque lattice work in the interstices of which 
 
 is a translucent, mica-like substance. The insect, entering from 
 
 beneath, in search of shelter, finds itself in a cosy chamber, well lined, 
 
 and weather proof. Once inside the chamber, however, it discovers 
 
 that it is being swallowed, irresistibly — and the plant finally deposits 
 
 it in the stomach below, where it digests it with a secretion akin to 
 
 hydrochloric acid. There are several other known carnivorous 
 
 plants, showing that at some time in their ancestry, the soil 
 
 has not given them sufficient nutriment for their needs. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 legs of beetles and grasshoppers and the bones of 
 toads and frogs. 
 
 "Is this not a more wonderful manifestation of 
 old environment, recorded within a plant in the 
 form of heredity, than even that of a bear which 
 seemed to have inherited the intelligence and skill 
 
 to fish?" 
 
 ***** 
 
 "To my mind," said one of the scientists, "the 
 by-product of your work is fully as interesting as 
 the work itself — the viewpoint which you get on 
 the forces which control life is of even greater 
 attraction to me than the wonderful productions 
 which you have coaxed from the soil." 
 
 "A by-product, no," said Mr. Burbank; "these 
 things are a vital part of the day's work. Heredity 
 is more a factor in plant improvement than 
 hoes or rakes; a knowledge of the battle of the 
 tendencies within a plant is the very basis of all 
 plant improvement. It is not, as you seem to think, 
 that the work of plant improvement brings with 
 it, incidentally, a knowledge of those forces. It 
 is the knowledge of those forces, rather, which 
 
 makes plant improvement possible." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "There are really, after all, only two main 
 influences which enter into the make-up of life — 
 only two influences which we need to direct, in 
 
 [52] 
 
ON HEREDITY 
 
 order to change and control the characteristics of 
 any individual growing thing. 
 
 "The first of these is environment. 
 
 "The rains, the snows, the fogs, the droughts — 
 the heat, the cold — the winds, the change in 
 temperature between night and day — the soil, the 
 location in shade or sun — competition for food, 
 light, air — the neighbors, whether they be plant 
 neighbors, or animal neighbors, or human neigh- 
 bors — all of these, and a thousand other factors 
 which could be thought of, are the elements of 
 environment — some pulling the plant one way and 
 some another, but each with its definite, though 
 sometimes hardly noticeable, influence on the 
 individual plant. 
 
 "And the second is heredity: 
 
 "Which is the sum of all of the environments 
 of a complex ancestry — back to the beginning." 
 ***** 
 
 "Just as with the bear, if the story be true, so 
 in plant life. In every seed that is produced there 
 are stored away the tendencies of centuries and 
 centuries of ancestry. The seed is but a bundle of 
 tendencies. 
 
 "When these tendencies have been nicely 
 balanced by a long continuation of unchanging 
 environment, the offspring is likely to resemble the 
 parent. 
 
 [53] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "But when, through a change of environment, 
 that balance is disturbed, no man can predict the 
 outcome. 
 
 "So when a seed is planted, no man can be sure 
 whether the twentieth century tendencies will 
 predominate; or whether long-forgotten tendencies 
 may suddenly spring into prominence and carry 
 the plant back to a bygone age." 
 ***** 
 
 "How can seeds store up the tendencies of their 
 ancestry?" some one asked Mr. Burbank. 
 
 "How can your mind store up the impressions 
 which it receives?" he asked in reply. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Hidden away in the twists and turns of our own 
 brains, needing but the right conditions to call 
 them forth with vividness, there are hundreds of 
 thousands, perhaps millions of impressions which 
 have been registered there day by day. 
 
 The first childhood's scare on learning of the 
 presence of burglars in the house may make us 
 supersensitive to night noises in middle age. 
 
 The indelible recollection of a mother's love 
 and tenderness may arise, after forty years, to 
 choke down some harsh word which we are about 
 to utter. 
 
 The combined impressions of a thousand expe- 
 riences with other human beings seem to blend 
 
 [54] 
 
ON HEREDITY 
 
 together to help us form our judgment of a single 
 human being with whom we are about to deal. 
 
 As the weeks have rolled into months, and as the 
 months have melted into years, new impressions 
 have arisen to crowd out the old; stronger impres- 
 sions have supplanted the weak, bigger impressions 
 have taken the place of lesser ones — but the old 
 impressions are always there — always blending 
 themselves into our judgments, our ambitions, our 
 desires, our ideals — always ready and waiting, 
 apparently, to single themselves out and appear 
 before us brilliantly whenever the proper com- 
 bination of conditions arises. 
 
 So, too, with the seed. 
 
 Every drought that has caused hardship to its 
 ancestors is recorded as a tendency in that seed. 
 
 Every favoring condition which has brought a 
 forbear to greater productiveness is there as a 
 tendency in that seed. 
 
 Every frost, every rain, every rise of the 
 morning sun has left its imprint in the line of 
 ancestry and helped to mold tendencies to be 
 passed from plant to plant. 
 
 Beneath the wooden looking, hard sheathed 
 covering of the seed, there is confined a bundle of 
 tendencies — an infinite bundle — and nothing more. 
 
 One tendency stronger than another perhaps — 
 a good tendency suppressing a bad tendency — or 
 
 [55] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 the other way; tendencies inherited from imme- 
 diate parents, tendencies coming down from wild 
 ancestry, tendencies originating from the influences 
 of twenty centuries or more ago — tendencies which 
 are latent, awaiting only the right combination 
 of conditions to bring them to life; all of the 
 tendencies of a complex ancestry — some lulled to 
 sleep, but none obliterated; that is a seed. 
 ***** 
 
 "The whole life history of a plant," said Mr. 
 Burbank, "is stored away in its seeds. 
 
 "If we plant enough of the seeds, in enough 
 different environments, we are sure to have that 
 life history with all of its variations, all of its 
 hardships, all of its improvements and retrogres- 
 sions, uncovered before us." 
 
 ***** 
 
 Which brings us to the boyhood lesson which 
 Luther Burbank learned. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Thomas A. Edison spilled chemicals on the 
 floor of a baggage car — lost his job as train boy — 
 and made electricity his vocation instead of his 
 avocation. 
 
 Luther Burbank found a seed ball on one of 
 the plants of his mother's potato patch. 
 
 Who knows what little thing will change a 
 career? Or what accident will transform an ideal? 
 
 [56] 
 
How the Carnation Insures Variation — / 
 
 This direct color photograph print, greatly enlarged, 
 
 shows that the carnation has perfected a device for insuring 
 
 variation equally ingenious as the geranium's. This photograph 
 
 shows the pistil, arising from the yellowish egg nest, 
 
 closed and unreceptive at the time that the pollen, 
 
 which may be seen on the two stamens at its 
 
 right, is ready for distribution. 
 
How the Carnation Insures Variation — // 
 
 The pollen has now disappeared from the anthers and 
 
 the pistil spreads to receive pollen from a neighboring carnation. 
 
 The fuzzy, sticky surface of the receptive portion of 
 
 the pistil may be seen in this photograph. 
 
How the Carnation Insures Variation — 111 
 
 This direct color photograph print shows the housing 
 
 of the carnation's egg nest cut away, and the individual eggs 
 
 closeted beneath the pistil awaiting fertilization 
 
 can be clearly distinguished. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 the combination between the two, instead of 
 between the pollen grains and the eggs of a single 
 
 blossom. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Which is exactly what the Mother Geranium 
 
 intended we should do. 
 
 ***** 
 
 If the stigma of a blossom were at its receptive 
 stage when the pollen packages around it burst 
 open, there would probably be combined in the 
 seeds of its egg chamber below, only the charac- 
 teristics of one parent plant — only the tendencies 
 of a single line of ancestry. 
 
 The geraniums growing from those seeds would 
 be so like in their tendencies of heredity that they 
 would differ, individually, only as their individual 
 environments differed. 
 
 But when those eggs have brought to them 
 the pollen from another plant, there are, confined 
 within them, the tendencies and characteristics of 
 two complex lines of ancestry; so that the plants 
 iDto which they grow will be encouraged into 
 variation and individuality, not as a result of 
 environment alone, but as a result of the countless 
 tendencies inherited from two separate lines of 
 parentage. 
 
 What a scheme for pitting the old tendencies of 
 heredity against the new tendencies of environ- 
 
 [76] 
 
ON VARIATION 
 
 ment — what an infinite possibility of combinations 
 
 this opens up! 
 
 ***** 
 
 Truly of a million geranium blossoms no two 
 could be exactly alike — nor any two of their five 
 million petals — nor any two of their ten million 
 stamens — nor any two of their hundred million 
 honey glands — nor any two of their billion pollen 
 
 granules ! 
 
 ***** 
 
 What we have seen in the geranium — those 
 seed-like eggs, the sticky stigma and that micro- 
 scopic pollen dust, we may see in some form or 
 other in every plant that grows. 
 
 The act which we might have performed to 
 produce a new geranium plant — the combination 
 of one of those seeds with some of that pollen — 
 is going on about us always, everywhere — with the 
 bees, and the butterflies, and the birds, and the 
 winds, and a score of other agencies acting to 
 effect those combinations. 
 
 Which is the reason for the candy factory at the 
 bottom of every geranium's little central well. And 
 for those brilliant petals, and that delicate scent, 
 and the picket arrangement of the stamen stalks, 
 and the crosswise poise of their pollen-bearing 
 anthers, and the central pistil stalk which rises 
 upward from the egg nest — and everything that is 
 
 [77] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 beautiful and lovely in the bloom of that geranium 
 
 — and the geranium itself. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Here is a plant, the geranium, so anxious to 
 produce variations in its offspring that it has lost 
 the power of fertilizing its own eggs and risked 
 its whole posterity upon the cooperation of a 
 neighboring plant. 
 
 It has no power of locomotion — no ability to 
 get about from place to place in search of pollen 
 for its eggs or of eggs in need of its pollen; nor 
 has its neighbor; so they call in an outside 
 messenger of reproduction — the bee. 
 
 The geranium makes its honey at the bottom 
 of its blossom. It places movable packages of 
 pollen dust balanced on springy stamens in such 
 a way that, to reach the sweets, the pollen hedge 
 must be broken through. It keeps its egg chamber 
 closed and its pistil unreceptive while the pollen 
 dust is there, and as if to advertise its hidden 
 sweets to the nectar loving bees, it throws out 
 shapely petals of brilliant hue and exudes a 
 charming scent. 
 
 And thus, the bees, attracted from afar, crowd- 
 ing into the tiny wells to get their sweets, become 
 besmeared with pollen dust as they enter a pollen 
 bearing bloom — and leave a load of pollen dust 
 wherever they find a receptive stigma. 
 
 [78] 
 
A Pollen Laden Bee 
 
 This direct color photograph print shows a bee, greatly 
 enlarged, which was captured in a cactus flower. The pollen 
 grains can be seen sticking to its hairy body, and the fact that, as it 
 crawls into the next flower, some of this pollen will find 
 lodgment on the sticky surface of a receptive stigma is 
 easily realized. The bees gather pollen not only for 
 distribution but for their own uses. The two 
 large splotches of pollen shown beneath 
 the second pair of legs are "pol- 
 len dough" which the bees 
 carry home for food. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Where did the geranium get its color? 
 
 "From the bees," said Mr. Burbank. 
 
 Just as the cactus covered itself with spines 
 until it had built up an effective armor, in the same 
 way the geranium, by easy stages, has worked out 
 a color scheme to attract the bees upon which it 
 depends to effect its reproduction. 
 ***** 
 
 In Mr. Burbank's yard there grows, as this is 
 written, a Chinese arum whose color and whose 
 scent reveal a different history. 
 
 Unlike most common flowers which advertise 
 to bees and birds and butterflies, this plant sends 
 its message to the flies. 
 
 Flies feed on carrion. The nectar of clover is 
 not to their liking and the brilliant colors of our 
 garden flowers fail to attract them. Our refuse 
 is their food, and they are guided to it by colors 
 and scents which are offensive to us. 
 
 So this Chinese carrion lily, as it has been 
 named — stranded at some time in its history, 
 perhaps, in some place where flies were its only 
 available messengers of reproduction, or blooming 
 at a period when other means were not within 
 its reach — has bedecked its spathe with a rich 
 and mottled purple — in color and in texture 
 resembling, from a distance, the color and 
 texture of a decaying piece of liver. 
 
 [80] 
 
A Fly-Loving Flower 
 
 The Chinese carrion lily pictured here, advertises to the 
 
 flies to act as its messengers of pollenation. The spathe . 
 
 frequently grows to eighteen inches in length and, as can be seen, 
 
 though rich and really beautiful, is of the same color as a piece 
 
 of decaying liver. The smell emitted from this flower 
 
 is offensive in the extreme — all an advertisement 
 
 to the flies, which are carrion-loving insects. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Just as the geranium supplements its advertise- 
 ment in color with an advertisement in scent, so, 
 too, the carrion lily has developed an individual 
 odor-appeal, decidedly like that of meat too long 
 exposed to the sun. 
 
 So obnoxious and so penetrating is the odor 
 of this flower that each year it has been found 
 necessary to cut down the plant shortly after it 
 has bloomed. 
 
 And so truly has it achieved its ideal that even 
 the buzzards, carrion birds that they are, attracted 
 by its color, its texture and its smell, have 
 descended in ever-narrowing circles — only to fly 
 away in disgust when they found they had been 
 lured by a flower. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Where the geranium finds it satisfactory merely 
 to block the entrance to its honey store with an 
 array of pollen bundles which must be pushed 
 aside by the entering insect, the Chinese carrion 
 lily makes doubly sure of pollenation by means 
 of a still more ingenious device. 
 
 The fry, attracted by the color of the spathe and 
 guided by the hidden odor at the base of the flower, 
 lights on the sturdy spadix and uses it as a ladder 
 for descent. The opening around the spadix is 
 just large enough to afford a comfortable passage 
 way; but once within the well, the spathe closes in 
 
 [82] 
 
ON VARIATION 
 
 and snugly hugs the spadix, so that the fly, buzzing 
 about in the chamber below, becomes thoroughly 
 covered with the pollen dust. 
 
 This done, the flower slowly unfolds and 
 permits the pollen laden insect to escape. 
 ***** 
 
 Many other flowers show equal or greater 
 ingenuity. 
 
 In some varieties of the sage, the pollen-bear- 
 ing stamens actually descend and quickly rub the 
 yellow dust on either side of the insect, after which 
 they fall back into their former position above the 
 nectar cells. 
 
 Most of the orchids, too, show an unusual 
 ingenuity. 
 
 One species bears its pollen in small bundles, 
 the base of each bundle being a sticky disc. The 
 structural arrangement of the flower is such that 
 the insect cannot secure its nectar without carrying 
 away at least one of the bundles. A pollen bundle 
 glues itself to the head of the insect and curves 
 upward like a horn. 
 
 As soon as the insect has withdrawn from the 
 flower, this pollen horn bends downward in front 
 of the insect, close to its head, so that when the 
 next flower is entered the dust can hardly fail to 
 reach a receptive portion of the pistil. 
 
 In this orchid there is but a single receptive 
 
 [83] 
 
The Orchid Awaiting an Insect 
 
 Flowers are usually not only designed by their general 
 shape to attract insects, but their nectar store is often sur- 
 rounded by a target of some kind — sometimes of color only, and 
 sometimes as in the case of the orchid, a folded leaf which guides the 
 insect in. Almost all flowers, in this way, have centers which 
 are white, or more brilliant than, or different from the 
 rest of their color, as if to lead the insect to its 
 work with the least possible delay. The 
 orchid's pollen may be seen in this 
 photograph print directly in the 
 center of the flower. 
 
The Orchid's Pollen Bundles 
 
 With the rest of the blossom torn away, the orchid's 
 
 pollen bundles and its sticky stigma may be seen in this 
 
 photograph print. These bundles attach themselves to the head of 
 
 the insect, sticking out like a horn so that the next flower visited will 
 
 be sure to receive its charge of pollen. The sticky stigma 
 
 can be seen in this print directly beneath the two pollen 
 
 bundles at the top. The petal itself of course 
 
 is bent down to show the structure, but it 
 
 can be seen that the colors and all 
 
 of the lines lead to the central 
 
 point as if to guide the bee. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 stigma and the pollen bundles are separate and 
 single, too; but in another orchid which has two 
 receptive stigmas, the pollen bundles are in doub- 
 lets, held together with a strap. 
 
 Thus the insect visiting this second orchid 
 carries away two pollen bundles on its forehead, 
 each so nicely placed that their dust will reach 
 both sticky stigmas of the next flower entered. 
 ***** 
 
 Similarly, the pollen of the milkweed is stored 
 in two little bags, connected by a strap. When 
 the bee visits the flower its feet become entangled 
 in this strap and when it leaves it carries both bags 
 with it. 
 
 And so, throughout the whole range of plant 
 life, each fresh investigation would show a new 
 display of ingenuity — infinite ingenuity directed 
 toward the single end of combining the tendencies 
 of two lines of heredity — so that the offspring may 
 be different from and better than the parent. 
 
 We should see that there are those flowers 
 which bloom only in the night. Flowers which, as 
 if having tried to perfect a lure for the insects of 
 the day, and having failed, have reversed the order 
 of things and send forth blossoms of white or 
 yellow — luminous colors always — to attract the 
 moths that fly after the sun goes down. 
 
 We should find many interesting half hours 
 
 [86] 
 
A Humming Bird Flower 
 
 The common nasturtium may be taken as a type of 
 flower which advertises to the birds rather than to the bees. 
 The honey is stored at the bottom of a long tube down which a 
 bee could hardly stretch its proboscis. In many other ways, 
 including the arrangement of the stamens and pistils, 
 bird flowers show their adaptation to the partner- 
 ship which their ancestors have built up. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 of wonder contemplating such flowers as the 
 honeysuckle, the nasturtium and many of the 
 lilies — which have taken special precaution to 
 place their nectar in long, horn-like tubes, out of 
 the reach of insects, so that only the birds may 
 become their messengers of reproduction. 
 
 We should see the pathos of those flowers 
 which advertise for insects that rarely come. The 
 barberry, for example, which can be pollenated 
 only during the bright hours of a cloudless day, 
 and during a time so short that there is little 
 chance of pollen being brought by insects from 
 other blossoms. Each barberry blossom, ready 
 for the insect if it should come, but as if expecting 
 disappointment, makes sure of self perpetuation, 
 if not of self improvement, by jabbing its pollen 
 laden anthers on its own stigma with a motion as 
 positive and as accurate as the jump of a cat. 
 
 Or the fennel flower of France, in which the 
 several pistils bend over and take pollen from the 
 stamens around them and straighten up again. 
 
 Or the flowers of the nettle, in which the 
 stamens increase their height with a sudden 
 spring-like action, showering the pollen up over 
 the receptive stigma. 
 
 We should observe that wheat and some of the 
 other grains, as though discouraged by centuries 
 and centuries of failure to secure variation, had 
 
 [88] 
 
ON VARIATION 
 
 settled down to the steady task of reproducing 
 their kind exactly as it is, depending only on 
 individual environment for individuality, and 
 ensuring reproduction by self pollenation. 
 
 We should see plants in all stages of their 
 attempts to keep their kind on the upward trend; 
 we should see a range of ingenuity so great that 
 no man, no matter how many of his days have 
 been devoted to the study of plants and their ways, 
 
 can ever become dulled to its wonders. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "I bought some extremely expensive seed corn 
 several years back," complained a Santa Rosa 
 farmer. "But, just as I expected, it ran down. 
 The first year's corn was fine, and so was the 
 second; but now it has gone clear back to ordinary 
 corn. This plant improvement doesn't pay." 
 
 "Do you know how corn reproduces itself?" 
 asked Mr. Burbank. 
 
 "Do you realize that if you plant good corn on 
 one side of a fence, and inferior corn on the other, 
 the corn cannot see the fence? 
 
 "Would you expect that a cross between a race 
 horse and some family dobbin would produce a 
 line of racers? 
 
 "Separate your good corn from your poor, 
 and keep it by itself, and you will find that it does 
 not run down, but even gradually improves." 
 
 [89] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Every farmer knows that corn must be planted 
 in large quantities close together — that a single 
 kernel of corn, planted in one corner of a lot, 
 apart from other growing corn, would be non- 
 productive. 
 
 Yet how many of those who depend upon corn 
 for their living fully realize the reason for this? 
 
 The geranium, with its nectar, its scent, its 
 color and its structural arrangement, has built 
 up a partnership with the bee to perform its 
 pollenation. 
 
 While corn, with no advertisement, no honey, 
 no brilliant reds, no scent, has developed an 
 equally effective plan of making the breezes act 
 
 as its messenger of reproduction. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Here is a plant, tall and supple, that responds 
 with graceful movements to the slightest breath of 
 air. At its top it holds a bunch of pollen laden 
 tassels — swaying tassels which, with each back- 
 ward and forward movement, discharge their tiny 
 pollen grains in clouds, which slowly settle to the 
 ground. 
 
 Below, on the stalk of the plant, are the ears of 
 corn, containing row after row of the egg kernels, 
 needing but combination with pollen from above 
 to become, each, a seed capable of starting another 
 corn plant on its life. 
 
 [90] 
 
An Experiment in Corn 
 
 The ear of corn shown at the left is one which, on an 
 
 ordinary corn plant, was allowed to take its course. The 
 
 whln r Z ° ne „ which w ™. ^vered with a paper bag at the time 
 
 Vt 1 ,4 P f f n WaS flying - The ^ands of silk thus being 
 
 protected from pollen, the kernels beneath did not 
 
 mature. It will be seen from this that the breezes 
 
 are as necessary to the corn plant as the 
 
 bees and birds are to the flowers. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Just as the eggs of the geranium were housed in 
 a protective covering, so, too, the corn eggs are 
 sheathed in protective husks. And just as a tiny 
 stalk protruded from the egg chamber of the 
 geranium, so, too, does the silk which protrudes 
 from the end of the husk serve the same purpose 
 for the corn seed. 
 
 Tear the husks from an ear of corn, and it will 
 be seen that each strand of the protruding silk 
 goes back to an individual kernel on the ear. 
 That, between the rows of kernels, like electric 
 wires in a conduit, each strand of the common 
 bundle of silk protruding leads back to its separate 
 starting place. 
 
 To combine the characters of two parent corn 
 plants, all that is necessary is to dust the pollen 
 from the tassel, of one on the silken ducts of the 
 ear of another. 
 
 And the breezes, as the3 r swish a waving field 
 of corn gracefully to and fro — as they play through 
 a forest of pines, or as they ripple the grasses of 
 our lawns — are performing their function in the 
 scheme of reproduction as effectively as the bee 
 does when it goes from geranium to geranium 
 in search of sweets. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Consider the simple salt-water cell, as seen 
 reproducing itself under the microscope merely 
 
 [92] 
 
ON VARIATION 
 
 by splitting in two; and those two each becoming 
 two, and so on endlessly. 
 
 Observe that, with only a single line of 
 parentage from which to draw tendencies, the 
 individualities to be found in this, the lowest form 
 of life we know, are molded wholly by the differ- 
 ence in the saltiness of the water, or the variation 
 in its temperature, or those other limited changes 
 within a short-lived environment. 
 
 And then consider the geranium, and the 
 Chinese arum, and the orchid, and the corn — with 
 a thousand added complications in their lives 
 brought about by a single dominant purpose — a 
 thousand self-imposed difficulties and obstacles 
 which would be needless except for that guiding 
 desire to give the offspring a better chance than 
 the parent had! 
 
 What a price to pay for variation! What 
 ingenuity and effort each new combination of 
 heredities has cost! How many must have been 
 the plants which advertised for insects that did 
 not come! How many, finding themselves in an 
 unequal struggle, have perished in the attempt! 
 ***** 
 
 Truly, if the cost of things may be taken 
 as a measure of their value, how much must this 
 dearly bought variation be worth in the Scheme 
 of Things! 
 
 [93] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "The struggle of a plant to secure variation in 
 its offspring does not end with the seed," said Mr. 
 Burbank. "It only begins there." 
 
 ***** 
 
 In the tropics, a common tree near the seashore 
 is the coconut palm. The coconuts which we 
 find in our market, their hard shells outermost, 
 are but the inside portion of the nuts as they grew 
 on these trees. 
 
 When they were gathered, there was a fibrous 
 substance surrounding the shell an inch or two 
 in thickness — a woody fiber torn off by the 
 shippers to cut down the cost of freight and 
 cartage. Around this excelsior-like covering, as 
 the nut grew on the tree, there was a skin-tight, 
 waterproof cover, with a smooth or even shiny 
 surface. 
 
 At the top of the nut as it would stand if it 
 floated in water, are three well defined eyes. 
 
 Since these coconut palms grow, usually, along 
 the water's edge, the nuts often roll into a brook, 
 or a river, or the ocean, and float away. 
 
 Once detached from the tree and started on 
 such a journey, the eyes disclose their purpose. 
 Two of them begin to throw out a system of roots, 
 not on the outside of the coconut, but growing at 
 first within the woody fiber between the shell and 
 the outside skin. 
 
 [94] 
 
The Coconut's Three Eyes 
 
 As this coconut falls in the water, one of the eyes shown 
 at the top throws up a sail-like leaf while the other two begin to 
 throw out a mass of roots within the excelsior-like covering, but inside 
 of the waterproof cover of the nut, which for the purpose of illus- 
 tration, has been removed. When the sail has carried the 
 nut to a new environment, the roots burst forth and 
 the sail grows into a taller stalk, which finally 
 becomes the trunk of the new palm. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 At the same time the other eye pushes out sail- 
 like leaves extending several inches above the 
 outer casing. 
 
 Then, with sails set, and aided by the current 
 of the stream, the nut starts out on its journey to 
 find an environment of its own. 
 
 Once landed, after weeks, perhaps, of travel, 
 the roots which have been growing inside force 
 their way out into the moist soil at the water's 
 edge — the sail leaves begin to grow into stalks, 
 which later develop into the trunk of the tree, 
 the waves start to build new ground by washing 
 sand around it, and the first page in the history 
 of a new palm in a new environment is written. 
 ***** 
 
 The hard shell surrounding the stored-up milk 
 in the coconut is there, obviously, as a protec- 
 tion from the monkeys; to prevent extermination 
 through their liking for the milk. 
 
 And that excelsior packing, and that water- 
 proof housing, are these not as plainly the 
 palm's attempt to provide for its baby tree a new 
 
 environment? 
 
 ***** 
 
 We do not have to go to the tropics for 
 evidences like these. 
 
 There is probably no more familiar weed in 
 our vacant lots than the common dandelion. 
 
 [96] 
 
ON VARIATION 
 
 Who can forget its feathery seed ball waiting, 
 when ripe, for the first youngster, or the first draft 
 of air to blow it away on its long sail through the 
 air as it distributes its seeds — some on stones, 
 perhaps, and some on plowed ground — such a 
 multitude of seeds that, though many be lost, some 
 will find themselves throwing roots into new soil, 
 rearing their heads into new air — starting life in 
 a new environment? 
 
 ***** 
 
 Or we might learn a lesson from one of the 
 wild chicories which provides some of its seeds 
 with wings to fly, while others it leaves wingless. 
 Those seeds without wings fall at the feet of the 
 parent plant as if to keep green the old family 
 home; while those with wings fly away to start new 
 families, under new conditions, where latent traits 
 and tendencies — latent elements of weakness or 
 strength — may cooperate to produce a better 
 chicory. 
 
 Or from that joy of childhood, the squirting 
 cucumber, which, when ripe, fires its seeds, mixed 
 up in its milky contents, with such force that they 
 are sometimes carried a distance of twelve to 
 fifteen feet. 
 
 Or even the sweet pea, or our garden pea, which 
 when their seeds have dried, have the ability to 
 throw them some distance from the parent plant. 
 
 [97] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 In Mexico, there is the familiar jumping bean 
 tree, which calls in an insect to aid in the distribu- 
 tion of its seeds. 
 
 While these beans are still green, they are 
 visited by a moth which lays her eggs in them. 
 As they ripen, the grub hatches out and lives upon 
 the food stored within. 
 
 As if in partnership with the moth, the jumping 
 bean tree has provided food for her offspring, so 
 that the larva has plenty to eat without injuring 
 the seed within the bean. 
 
 And the grub, as it hollows out the bean and 
 jumps about within it, causes it to turn and roll — 
 rolls it into a new environment — repays its family 
 debt to the tree which gave it food. 
 * * * * * 
 
 In the wooded mountains near Santa Rosa 
 there grows a pine tree which has worked out an 
 ingenious scheme for taking advantage of occa- 
 sional forest fires to aid it in its reproduction. 
 
 Most other trees mature their nuts or seeds and 
 shed them every season. The animals may eat the 
 fruit and carry the seeds afar, or take the nuts to 
 new environments, or the seedlings may come up 
 at the foot of the parent tree — but the process of 
 seed bearing and seed shedding usually completes 
 its cycle every fall. 
 
 The pine tree referred to, however, does not 
 
 [98] 
 
ON VARIATION 
 
 shed its seeds in this way, nor is there any 
 inducement in them or their covering to tempt an 
 animal to carry them away. 
 
 They grow in clusters about the trunk and 
 branches, but remain attached to the tree. The 
 cones which hold them do not even open. Some- 
 times nine or ten crops of these seed cones may 
 be observed clinging to a parent tree. 
 
 But whenever. the woods are visited by a forest 
 fire, the cones are dried out by the heat, and the 
 seeds, released, fall to the ground and sprout. 
 
 In the localities in which these trees grow, there 
 would be little chance for their seeds to germinate, 
 in fact, except after a forest fire had cleared the 
 ground. 
 
 Against the competition of all of the hardy 
 underbrush to be found in those localities, the 
 mother tree, it would seem, fears that her seeds 
 will have but a poor chance. 
 
 Yet when the fires have cleared the ground and 
 killed almost every other living thing, these seeds 
 spring up almost as quickly and almost as thickly 
 as grass on a lawn; and, competition removed, 
 they grow with surprising rapidity into the 
 making of a new forest. 
 
 It has been observed that these trees grow 
 usually along the sides of deep canyons where the 
 destructiveness of the fire is the greatest — and only 
 
 [99] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 in canyons where forest fires are frequent — show- 
 ing that without the aid of the fires, the tree can 
 not perpetuate itself. 
 
 So firmly fixed has this partnership between 
 the fires and this particular pine tree become that, 
 its seeds, if planted under other conditions, will 
 not germinate. 
 
 Taken from the tree, it is impossible to get 
 them to grow even with the greatest care in good 
 soil; but experiment has shown that, if placed for 
 a few hours in boiling water, they will readily 
 sprout even in poor soil. 
 
 Thus, as if through a strange alliance, the 
 forest fires clear the ground, scatter the cones and 
 prepare the seed of this pine tree for germination; 
 and the pine tree, in turn, rebuilds the forest 
 which the fires destroyed. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The devil's claw, a tropical relative of our 
 unicorn plant, has developed the power to bite 
 and to hold on with almost bulldog grip, in its 
 scheme of providing new environments for its 
 young. 
 
 This plant, growing low on the ground among 
 other tropical vegetation where the distribution of 
 seed becomes a problem, grows a seed pod of 
 seven inches or more in length. 
 
 Its seed pod, while maturing, is encased in a 
 
 [100] 
 
The Devils Claw— I 
 
 As it grows in the tropics, the need pod of the 
 
 devil's claw, or martynia, shown above, resembles a large 
 
 gourd in color and in texture of its covering. The succeeding 
 
 prints show how it transforms itself to bite and hold 
 
 on to passing animals with a bull dog grip. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 pulpy covering with a thick green skin, and its 
 bulb and hook suggest some kind of gourd. 
 
 When the seeds within are mature, the outside 
 covering splits and peels away, disclosing a seed 
 nest which is armored with spines more thickly 
 than a prickly pear. That which, during its early 
 stages, formed the hook, now spreads into two 
 branches with pointed ends sharper than pins, 
 almost as sharp as needles. 
 
 Between these four-inch hooks, where they join 
 the spiny bulb behind them, there appears a hole 
 from which the seeds, if loosened from their 
 former pulpy support, may, by pounding and 
 thumping, find their way out into the world. 
 
 As the seed pod lies on the ground, its sharp 
 hooks coiled in exactly the right position, it awaits 
 a passing animal. This spring trap may remain 
 set for many months, but once an animal, big or 
 small, steps between those fish-hook points, their 
 mission is accomplished. The first slight kick or 
 struggle to get away imbeds them deeply, and at 
 each succeeding struggle the hooks bite in, and in, 
 and in, until finally the animal, in its efforts for 
 release, pulls the seed pod from the plant and 
 starts to run. 
 
 Swinging to a leg or tail, suspended by the two 
 sharp points of its prongs, the spiny housing of 
 the seed pod comes now into play. At each bound 
 
 [102] 
 
The Devil's Claw— 11 
 
 In this print it will be seen that the gourd-like 
 
 covering is being shed, and that what at first seemed to 
 
 be but a single stem has separated into two wiry prongs. This 
 
 seed pod is attached to the plant by a stem which joins 
 
 it at the bottom of the picture shown above. 
 
The Devil's Claw— 111 
 
 Having completely shed its gourd-like covering, and with 
 
 its jaws set for a passing animal, it will be seen that the pod 
 
 itself is covered with prickly spines. When the fish-hook points of 
 
 the prongs bite into the leg of an animal, the whole contrivance becomes 
 
 balanced from that point, and at each jolt and jounce the heavier body 
 
 of the pod pounds down upon the leg, its spines causing great 
 
 pain. There is an opening between the two prongs at the 
 
 upper end of the pod itself from which the seeds 
 
 come out at every bounce. When these are 
 
 scattered over a mile or two of new 
 
 environment, the pod falls apart. 
 
ON VARIATION 
 
 or jump, the pod flops up and down, and its prickly 
 
 points, adding to the pain of the ever-pinching 
 
 hooks, are sure to keep the animal in motion. As 
 
 the frightened beast makes haste to get away from 
 
 an enemy which it cannot see, the seeds within the 
 
 pod begin to loosen and fall out on the ground. 
 
 When the last seed has left its shelter, the trap 
 
 begins to fall apart — its object accomplished — its 
 
 seeds scattered throughout a mile or more of new 
 
 environment. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The sailor is awed by the mountains, and the 
 mountaineer is awed by the sea. 
 
 And we, too, are more apt to wonder at the 
 jumping beans of Mexico and at the devil's claw of 
 the equator than at the cherry tree in our own 
 back yard — which outdoes both of these by form- 
 ing a double partnership. 
 
 Just as the geranium bids for the bees, so the 
 cherry blossom, with its delicate pink and its store 
 of honey advertises for butterflies and bees to 
 bring the pollen from a neighboring tree. 
 
 And this partnership concluded, the accounts 
 balanced and the books closed, it then seeks new 
 partners in the birds. 
 
 That delicious meat around the seed, that shiny 
 skin of red, and that odor of the cherry as it ripens 
 — these are a part of the advertisement to the 
 
 [105] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 birds or animals — a lure to get them to eat the 
 fruit and carry the seed as far as they may to 
 another— a new — environment. 
 
 Shall we wonder at the jumping bean and the 
 devil's claw when our own cherry tree is getting 
 the bees to give its offspring new heredities and 
 the birds to surround these heredities with new 
 
 environments in which to grow? 
 
 ***** 
 
 Wherever we look we see a new display of 
 ingenuity — all for the sake of variation — variation 
 which may mean retrogression as well as advance- 
 ment — but such infinite variation that, surely, 
 there can be found one out of a thousand, or one 
 out of ten thousand, or one out of a million better 
 than those that went before. 
 
 Every flower that delights our eye, and every 
 fruit which pleases our palate, and every plant 
 which yields us a useful substance, is as delightful 
 as it is, or as pleasing or as useful as it is, simply 
 because of the improvement which has been made 
 possible through variation. 
 
 — No two living things 
 are exactly alike. 
 
The Rivalry of Plants 
 to Please Us 
 
 On the Forward March 
 of Adaptation 
 
 WE cut down our alfalfa four or five 
 times a season," says some one, "why 
 doesn't it grow spines to protect itself? 
 We destroy our lettuce before it goes to seed; 
 why doesn't it develop a protective bitterness like 
 the sagebrush? 
 
 "We rob our apple trees of all their fruit the 
 moment they are ripe; why do they not become 
 poisonous like the desert euphorbias?" 
 ***** 
 
 "Let us go back to the cactus," says Mr. Bur- 
 bank, "and read the answer. 
 
 "Grim and threatening though the cactus seems, 
 it is not without its softer side; in the springtime 
 its blossoms, a multitude of them, push their way 
 through the spiny armor — and rival the rose in 
 formation, compete with the orchid in the delicacy 
 of their hues. 
 
 [Volume I — Chapter IV] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "No favorite garden flower can outdo this 
 ungainly monster of the desert, when in hloom, 
 in the seductiveness of its advertisement to the 
 bee. 
 
 "When summer comes, and the bee has paid, 
 by the service it has rendered, for the honey it has 
 taken, the nest of fertile eggs beneath each cactus 
 blossom begins to grow into a luscious fruit. 
 
 "In this cactus fruit there is an acid sweetness 
 as tempting as that of the raspberry, the straw- 
 berry or the pineapple. Its outward covering has 
 a brilliant beauty no less attractive than that of 
 the cherry, or the grape. 
 
 "Thus, in the springtime, the cactus, like the 
 cherry, advertises to the friendly bees to bring 
 its offspring new heredities, and, in the fall, it 
 advertises to the friendly birds to carry off its 
 seed and plant it where its young may have the 
 advantage of new environments. 
 
 "In its spiny armor we read the plant's response 
 to the enemies in its environment. 
 
 "In its brilliant flowers and tempting fruit we 
 read its receptiveness to the friendship of the birds 
 and bees. 
 
 "Those spines and those flowers and fruits tell 
 us that while its ancestors were fighting a common 
 foe, they still found time to build up lasting 
 partnerships. 
 
 [108] 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 "And so, with every plant that grows, we shall 
 see these same tendencies — instincts shall we call 
 them? — to ward off the enemy and make use of 
 
 the friend." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "So long as plants grow wild, the frosts, the 
 winds, the hail storms, the droughts and the 
 animals are principal among the enemies with 
 which they have to reckon. 
 
 "So long as they grow in the woods, or on the 
 mountains, or in the deserts, the bees and the birds 
 and the butterflies — the warmth of the sun and 
 moisture of the soil — these are among the friendly 
 factors in their lives. 
 
 "But when we take plants under cultivation, we 
 upset their whole environment. 
 
 "We build fences around our blackberries so 
 that they need no thorns. We save the seeds of our 
 radishes, and the bulbs of our lilies, and through 
 human organization distribute them and plant 
 them wherever they will grow. We cut slips from 
 our apple trees and ship them from county to 
 county, and state to state, and nation to nation, and 
 zone to zone. We select, and improve, and plow, 
 and harrow the ground for our plants; we water 
 them when they are dry; we surround them with 
 shade trees if they need shade, we cut down the 
 shade trees if they prefer the sun; we plant their 
 
 [109] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 baby seedlings under glass, and give them every 
 favoring condition in which to mature; we remove 
 what for ages have been the chief problems of 
 their lives — we take over their two prime burdens, 
 the burdens of self defense and reproduction. 
 
 "The frosts, and the winds, and the hail storms, 
 and the droughts, and the animals are no longer 
 the chief enemies of plants; for man, when he 
 comes into their environment, is more dreadful 
 than all of these combined — if he chooses to 
 destroy. 
 
 "And the bees and the birds and the butterflies, 
 and the warmth of the sun, and the moisture in the 
 soil, fade into insignificance as friendly influences 
 when compared with that of man— if it pleases 
 him to be a friend. 
 
 "So the geranium still advertises to the bees, 
 and the cherry tree to the butterflies and birds, as 
 of old. 
 
 "But their main advertisement, now, is an 
 advertisement to us; their strongest effort, now 
 that we have become predominant in their lives, is 
 to lure us with their blossoms and their fruit — to 
 enchant us with their odors, and colors, and 
 lusciousness, as they formerly enchanted only 
 the bees — to win and hold our appreciation and 
 affection, and merit our kindly attention and 
 care." 
 
 [110] 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 Our alfalfa, lettuce and apples, like our horses, 
 our cows, our dogs, have found in man a friend 
 stronger than the strongest of their enemies. 
 
 So their welfare now is measured by the 
 usefulness of the service they can render in repay- 
 ment for man's care. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "There is a common snowball in my yard," 
 continued Mr. Burbank, "which advertises alone 
 to me. 
 
 "In the woods around there are other snowballs 
 of the same family — wild snowballs — into whose 
 life history man, as a part of environment, has 
 never come. 
 
 "The wild snowball, with only a fringe of 
 blossoms, and a mass of egg nests and pollen inside 
 the fringe, is still advertising to the bee. 
 
 "But the snowball in my yard has responded 
 to my care, and to the care of those who went 
 before me, till its stamens and pistils, as if seeing 
 their needlessness, have turned to blossoms — till 
 its eggs have grown sterile, even should an insect 
 come. 
 
 "And so, with every snowball which grows in 
 anybody's yard — cultivation has relieved it of the 
 need for reproduction, and what was once but a 
 fringe of flowers has been transformed into a 
 solid mass of blossoms. 
 
 [Ill] 
 
The Snowball, Tame and Wild 
 
 The upper snowball is the one which grew in Mr. 
 Burbank's yard, or such as commonly grows under cultivation. 
 The snowball below is a wild one such as grows in the woods. The 
 wild snowball, it will be seen, uses the flowers to attract 
 messengers of pollenation to the reproductive mechanism 
 which the flowers encircle. The upper snowball, 
 however, has lost its power of reproduc- 
 tion by seed and advertises to us, 
 instead, to perpetuate its race. 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 "Just as a mother cat can make a dumb appeal 
 for the protection or the sustenance of her kittens, 
 an appeal no human being can misunderstand, 
 just as strongly and just as clearly do the 
 snowballs, by the beauty and helplessness of their 
 self-sterilized flowers, appeal to us to see to their 
 protection and effect the perpetuation of their 
 
 kind." 
 
 ***** 
 
 Many violets, as they grow wild in the woods, 
 bear two kinds of blossoms. 
 
 One is the flower, rich in color and in scent, 
 which is borne at the top of the plant. 
 
 The other, an egg nest without odor, or beauty, 
 or other advertisement — which is borne near the 
 base of the plant. 
 
 The flower at the top, like the flower of a 
 geranium, advertises to the insects to bring pollen 
 from other plants. 
 
 The colorless flower at the bottom needs no 
 insect to bring it pollen — it pollenates itself and 
 produces fertile eggs with only a single strain of 
 heredity. 
 
 Some of these violets with upper and lower 
 blossoms, particularly those which grow in the 
 shade, never open their upper flowers — as if 
 knowing that the friendly insects so prefer the sun 
 that no attempt at advertisement could lure them 
 
 [113] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 to the shade. These violets reproduce themselves 
 wholly by the self-fertilization which goes on 
 within the colorless flower below. 
 
 And there are those violets, of this same kind, 
 blooming in the sunlight, which open their upper 
 flowers, so that, if visited by insects, the seed 
 within matures; but, as if in doubt of the effective- 
 ness of their advertisement, the lower blossoms 
 continue to produce their inbred seed. 
 
 And there are still other violets which, as if 
 assured of the friendship of the insects, have 
 ceased to make the colorless blossoms below, and 
 produce their entire output of seed at the base of 
 the brilliant upper flower. 
 
 Here, in these three kinds of violets, is written 
 the story of a plant's struggle with wild environ- 
 ment in which man has not yet become a factor; 
 the story of an unequal struggle in which the 
 stages of failure, partial victory, and complete 
 triumph are clearly laid before us. 
 ***** 
 
 Into the life of the violet, some few hundred 
 years ago, there came the new element of environ- 
 ment — man. 
 
 A single violet plant which was taken from its 
 catch-as-catch-can existence, let us say, found 
 itself in fine-combed soil in the shade of some 
 one's dooryard. 
 
 [114] 
 
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 •&5 «sg 
 
 J? "~. B ft , 
 
 
 5- s? a 2 K 3 
 
 w 
 
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 3 a 3 SrSr 
 
 ©* 
 
 OS 
 
 a 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 If it rained too much, drainage took up the 
 excess. When the rains did not come, the soil 
 was sprinkled. 
 
 Under cultivation, and kindly care, the discour- 
 agements of its life grew less and less, and the 
 encouragements to thrive grew more and more. 
 
 Soon this violet, as if assured of reproduction, 
 abandoned the blossoms at its base, and threw its 
 energies into making bigger and brighter and 
 more beautiful blossoms at its top. Where it had 
 half-heartedly advertised to the bees of old, it now- 
 concentrated its efforts to win the approval of the 
 new-found friend whose dooryard brought it 
 opportunity. 
 
 And this is the life story of that kind of violet 
 which we now call the pansy. 
 
 On the one hand, in the woods, we see its wild 
 kin-folk still struggling against unequal odds; on 
 the other we see its own large, beautiful pansy 
 petals, and the increased brilliancy of its hues; 
 each a response to environment. 
 
 Truly, in the pretty face of the pansy, we may 
 read the vivid story of man's importance as a 
 
 friendly element in the lives of plants. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Where do the flowers get their colors? 
 "From the bees," said Mr. Burbank. "And from 
 us." 
 
 [116] 
 
The Violet's Wonderful Advertisement 
 
 With both wondrous color and charming scent, some 
 
 violets advertise to the insects which, because of the flower's 
 
 preference for moist shady places, rarely come. Wild, in the woods, are 
 
 to be found violets which bear only colorless flowers as shown 
 
 in the preceding print, as well as some which bear both 
 
 kinds of flowers, and still others which, as if having 
 
 succeeded in attracting the insects, bear 
 
 only the delicate blossoms shown here. 
 
A Response to Kindly Care 
 
 Taken from its wild environment and freed from its 
 struggle, the violet became a pansy. Truly, in the pretty face of 
 the pansy, we may read the vivid story of man's impor- 
 tance as a friendly element in the lives of plants. 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 On the experiment farm at Santa Rosa, there 
 grow two ordinary looking pear trees which 
 amplify the thought. 
 
 One of these trees produces large, juicy, soft, 
 aromatic, luscious, easily digested pears — a delight 
 to the eye and to the palate. 
 
 The other produces small, hard, bitter, indi- 
 gestible fruit, the very opposite in every way of 
 our idea of what a pear should be. 
 
 Looking at these trees side by side, it would be 
 difficult to realize that their fruit could be so differ- 
 ent. Both show the unmistakable characteristics 
 of the pear tree — the pear tree shape, the pear tree 
 branches, the pear tree leaves, the pear tree blos- 
 soms. In their fruit alone do they differ. 
 ***** 
 
 Since these two pear trees illustrate an impor- 
 tant point, let us begin at the beginning: 
 
 The pear, it seems, was first discovered in 
 eastern Europe or western Asia. It was there, in 
 Eurasia, some two thousand years ago, that man 
 first realized that this fruit was good to eat. 
 
 Coming to us, thus, out of obscurity, the pear, 
 during these twenty centuries, has spread to the 
 east, and to the west, till it has completely encircled 
 the globe — a slow process, but one which takes 
 place in every desirable fruit which is discovered 
 or produced. 
 
 [119] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 As Europe became more and more settled, the 
 pear kept pace with the invaders. It followed them 
 to the British Isles, it followed them across the 
 Atlantic to America. It followed them westward 
 across this continent as the pioneers pushed their 
 way to the Pacific. 
 
 In the same way it worked its eastward journey 
 through Siberia, and China, and Japan — more 
 slowly, perhaps, than under the influence of 
 European and American hurry and enterprise, but 
 just as constantly, and just as surely — till now, in 
 friendly climates, it is a world-wide fruit. 
 ***** 
 
 Both of the pear trees described here, as in fact 
 all of the pear trees which we know today, seem to 
 have come from those common parents in eastern 
 Europe or western Asia. 
 
 The one in Mr. Burbank's yard which bears the 
 luscious fruit is the Bartlett pear — an excellent 
 though common variety in the United States. 
 
 The other, with its bitter, indigestible fruit, is 
 one which was imported from Japan. 
 ***** 
 
 The lesson which these two pear trees teach is 
 that fruits, like flowers, in their rivalry to please 
 us, adapt themselves to the tastes, desires, and 
 ideals of the human neighbors among whom they 
 grow. 
 
 [1201 
 
A Chinese Lily 
 
 The unusual shape of this flower, beautiful though it is, 
 
 shows how even flowers respond to the ideals of those whom 
 
 they grow to please. The very lines of this lily suggest dragons 
 
 and those other weird shapes which are pleasing to the eye 
 
 of the Oriental. This transformation in flowers was 
 
 worked in the same way that the transformation of 
 
 the pear, described here, was brought about. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Here, in America, we like fruits that are soft, 
 large, sweet, luscious, juicy, aromatic, easy to 
 digest when eaten raw. Our pears grow that way. 
 
 In Japan and China they like fruits which are 
 hard, small, bitter, dry, acid — suitable only for 
 pickling, preserving, or cooking. The Chinese and 
 Japanese pear trees bear that kind of fruit. 
 
 Neither the Japanese pear, nor our American 
 type, is like the original wild parent which was 
 first discovered near the middle of Russia. 
 
 Each has changed — one toward one set of 
 ideals — and the other toward another set. . 
 ***** 
 
 If we could lay bare before us the whole history 
 of the pear tree — if we could picture in our minds 
 its stages of progress beginning back in the times, 
 say, when instead of a fruit it bore only a seed 
 pod like the geranium's — we should see a record 
 of endless change, constant adaptation. 
 
 We should see that the soil, and the moisture, 
 and the sunshine, and the air, throughout the ages, 
 have played their parts in working the pear tree 
 forward. 
 
 We should see that other plants, crowding it 
 for room, or sapping the moisture from its feet, 
 or adding richness to the soil by their decaying 
 leaves and limbs, have done their share in hasten- 
 ing its improvement. 
 
 [122] 
 
Less Rind, More Meat 
 
 This color photograph print shows a good 
 
 comparison of the orange as it formerly grew and as 
 
 it grows today, since the orange has been transformed to meet our 
 
 ideals. Simply by selecting the kinds which have been 
 
 propagated this improvement has been worked. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 We should see that the bees and butterflies and 
 birds, with their help, and the caterpillars, locusts 
 and deer in their efforts to destroy, have all served 
 to aid the onward march. 
 
 We should see all the while a steady change for 
 the better — sturdier pear trees, brighter blossoms, 
 more seed, better fruit. 
 
 We should see that, with the aid of the elements, 
 the pear tree adapted itself to exist, hardened 
 itself to withstand many soils and many weathers. 
 
 We should see that, with the unintended aid of 
 its plant and animal enemies, it gained strength 
 through overcoming them. 
 
 We should see that, through the bees, it was 
 helped into variation by mixing up heredities; 
 and, by the birds, it was helped into still further 
 variation by mixing up environments. 
 
 Then, overshadowing all of these influences, 
 there came into its life new influences of man — 
 man savage and civilized, Oriental and Occidental 
 — man with a liking for pears. 
 
 Here in America, we who have grown pears 
 have saved those which were the sweetest, the 
 largest, the juiciest, the most luscious — because 
 those were the ones we liked best. 
 
 When we have bought pear trees to plant in our 
 yards, we have chosen those which would give us 
 the kind of fruit we prefer. 
 
 [124] 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 The pear trees which have pleased us have 
 received our care and cultivation — and we have 
 multiplied them. The pear trees which have failed 
 to produce fruit up to our ideals we have neglected 
 and allowed to die — so that they have practically 
 disappeared from our orchards. 
 
 The Orientals, their tastes and likes running in 
 opposite directions from ours, have discouraged 
 pear trees which bore the kind of fruit we prefer, 
 and have selected, and saved, and fostered, and 
 propagated those which gave them the hard, bitter 
 fruit of their ideals. 
 
 And so the struggle for adaptation set in 
 motion by the soil, the warmth, the cold, the 
 moisture, and the winds, was supplemented by the 
 bees, and then by the birds, until now we can 
 read, in the result, our own influence and that of 
 
 the Japanese. 
 
 ***** 
 
 There are differences between our dress and 
 the dress of the Orientals; between our religions 
 and the religions of the Orientals; between our 
 ambitions and the Oriental ambitions; between 
 our architecture and the architecture of the Orient 
 — all reflecting the national or racial differences 
 between the ideals of the two peoples. 
 
 And just as surely as the ideals of a people 
 influence the architecture with which they sur- 
 
 [125] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 round themselves, just as surely as they change 
 ambitions, mold religions, create dress styles, 
 just so surely do they influence and change the 
 characteristics of the plants in whose environment 
 
 they live. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "When I say that man is the biggest element 
 in the environment of plants," said Mr. Burbank, 
 "I do not mean those few men who have devoted 
 their lives to the improvement of plants. I do not 
 mean the botanist, the horticulturist, the florist, 
 the nurseryman, the agricultural experimentalist. 
 I mean man in the mass — man busy with his dry 
 goods store, or his steel company, occupied with 
 his law, or his medicine, tired out from his daily 
 blacksmithing, or his carpentering. I mean just 
 man, the neighbor of plants, whether he be their 
 friend or their enemy — whoever and whatever he 
 
 is." 
 
 ***** 
 
 It was the savage Indian who gave us, here in 
 America, the most important crop we have. 
 
 It was the Indian who found a wild grass 
 covering the plains and developed it into corn. 
 
 Or, to turn it the other way around, it was the 
 desire of the Indian for a food plant like this that 
 led the teosinte grass, by gradual adaptation, to 
 produce Indian corn or maize. 
 
 [126] 
 
Our Corn and Its Tiny Parent 
 
 In the direct color photograph print shown here a typical 
 
 ear of "dent" corn is placed for comparison beside the tiny teosinte 
 
 ear which the American Indians discovered and improved. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 On Mr. Burbank's experiment farm there 
 grows, today, this same teosinte grass which the 
 Indians found. 
 
 It bears tiny ears with two rows of corn-like 
 kernels, on a cob the thickness of a lead pencil, 
 and two and a half to four inches long — slightly 
 less in length and diameter than an average head 
 of wheat. 
 
 From its earlier stage of pod corn, in which 
 each kernel grew in a separate husk like wheat, 
 teosinte represented, no doubt, a hard fought 
 survival and adaptation like that of the flowering 
 violet. 
 
 And when the Indians came into its environ- 
 ment it responded to their influence as the pansy 
 responded to care and cultivation in its new 
 dooryard home. 
 
 "Where teosinte had formerly relied upon the 
 frosts to loosen up the ground for its seed, it found 
 in the Indians a friend who crudely but effectively 
 scratched the soil and doubled the chance for its 
 baby plant to grow. 
 
 Where it had been choked by plant enemies, 
 and starved for air and sunlight by weeds, it found 
 in the Indians a friend who cut down and kept off 
 its competitors. 
 
 Where it had been often destroyed by the 
 animals before its maturity, it found the selfish 
 
 [128] 
 
Some Other Forms of Corn 
 
 In the direct color photograph print shown here the 
 
 central ear and the ear at the right are "pod" corn, in which 
 
 each kernel is encased in a separate sheath. The ear at the left is 
 
 another form of teosinte with larger kernels than those in 
 
 the preceding print; from this latter the process by 
 
 which the kernels crowded each other until the cob 
 
 increased in size may be readily imagined. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 protection of the savages as grateful as though it 
 had been inspired by altruism. 
 
 Planted in patches, instead of straggling here 
 and there as best it could before, the teosinte 
 grass found its reproduction problem made easier 
 through the multitude of pollen grains now float- 
 ing through the air. 
 
 And so, by slow degrees, it responded to its 
 new environment by bearing more and bigger 
 seed. 
 
 As the seed kernels increased in numbers and 
 in size, the cob that bore them grew in length. 
 
 From two, the rows of kernels increased to 
 four, to six, to eight, to fourteen. 
 
 Here again the selfish motives of the savages 
 served to help the plant in its adaptation — for only 
 the largest ears and those with the best kernels 
 were saved for seed. 
 
 So, under cultivation, the wild grass almost 
 disappeared, and in its place there came, through 
 adaptation, the transformed Indian corn. 
 ***** 
 
 "There were two wealthy men in England," 
 said Mr. Burbank, "who took up the daffodil and 
 the narcissus, growing endless quantities of seed- 
 lings just for amusement. 
 
 "Both of these men, so it happened, were 
 bankers. One was a rather large, coarse, strong, 
 
 [130] 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 dominating type of man — not a repulsive man by 
 any means, but lacking, a little, in refinement and 
 the more delicate sensibilities. 
 
 "The other banker was a highly sensitive, 
 nervous, shrinking man with a great eye for detail, 
 a true appreciation of values, a man who looked 
 beneath the surface of things and saw beauty in 
 hidden truths, a man who thought much and said 
 little. 
 
 "These men were great rivals in their daffodil- 
 and narcissus-growing pastime, and each of them 
 succeeded in producing some wonderful variations 
 and adaptations in their plants. 
 
 "When these bankers died, their daffodil and 
 narcissus bulbs were offered for sale and fell into 
 the hands of a friend of mine, Peter Barr, a great 
 bulb expert of England. 
 
 "Peter Barr told me that though the bulbs 
 bought from those two estates were mixed and 
 planted indiscriminately on his proving grounds, 
 he could go through a field of those daffodils and 
 narcissuses and, simply by the blossoms, tell which 
 had come from one estate and which from the 
 other. 
 
 "The flowers that came from the bulbs that 
 represented the work of the first banker were 
 large, coarse, brightly colored, virile, strong 
 flowers — with a beauty that called to the passer-by 
 
 [131] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 as if out loud, and a self defiant attitude as if 
 bespeaking an ample ability to take care of 
 themselves. 
 
 "And the flowers which came from the bulbs 
 produced by the other banker were charmingly 
 delicate — not hardy, but rather shrinkingly artis- 
 tic — not loud in their color schemes, but softly 
 
 alluring with their subdued hues." 
 
 ***** 
 
 It costs money to ship oranges, so the more the 
 meat and the less the rind, the less we waste in 
 transportation charges. 
 
 A comparison of the wild orange with the 
 cultivated fruit of our orange groves shows how 
 this fruit has adapted itself to our ideas of 
 
 economy. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Lettuce in the head makes a more appetizing 
 salad than lettuce in large, sprawling leaves. 
 
 A comparison between wild lettuce and the 
 head lettuce on our green grocer's stand shows 
 plant adaptation to our salad demands. 
 ***** 
 
 And so with celery, and artichokes — and every 
 plant that is grown for the market — wild, its adap- 
 tations are toward meeting wild environments; 
 cultivated, its adaptations are toward fitting itself 
 into our routine of life. 
 
 [132] 
 
Wild Lettuce 
 
 A comparison between this and the large leaved, compact, 
 
 salad plant of our gardens shows the wonders of adaptation 
 
 which cultivation works. This wild lettuce is known in some places as 
 
 the "compass plant" because of the fact that its leaves, instead of 
 
 fanning out in all directions from the stalk, point always 
 
 north and south — an adaptation, no doubt, to protect 
 
 the plant from the heat of the mid-day sun. 
 
Wild Celery 
 
 A comparison between this plant and the appetizing product 
 
 which is found in our markets shows how we have taught the plant 
 
 to give us straight, smooth, tender stalks, instead of the short, 
 
 woody stalk, with long branches above it, shown here. 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 We have seen the price which variation costs; 
 now we begin to see the value of it. Among 
 those violets, environment — the environment of 
 the present combining with heredity which is the 
 recorded environment of all the past — contrived 
 to see that there were no duplicates; that each 
 violet, a little different from its mate, might, 
 through its difference, be suited to a separate 
 purpose, or fitted to carry a separate burden, or 
 designed to fill a separate want. 
 
 If the violets had been as like as pins, they 
 would have stayed as like as pins when planted 
 in that friendly dooryard. 
 
 But because each had within it the power of 
 transmitting variation, the power of responding, 
 ever so little, to the trend of its surroundings, one 
 
 violet became a pansy. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Among our human acquaintances we know 
 those who are sturdy, and those who are weak; 
 those who have well developed minds at the 
 expense of their muscles, and those who have well 
 developed muscles at the expense of their minds, 
 and those with a more evenly balanced develop- 
 ment; we know some who are tall and some who 
 are short; some with brown eyes and some with 
 blue; some who lean toward commerce, and some 
 who lean toward art; and on and on, throughout 
 
 [135] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 an infinite number of variations, an infinite 
 combination of those variations, each variation 
 representing the result of present environment 
 reacting upon all of the environments of the ages, 
 stored away. 
 
 As a people, we traveled b}' stage till the 
 railroad came; and then in a single generation, 
 because of the variation and the adaptability 
 among us, we found surveyors to push their 
 transits over the hills, and valleys, and streams; 
 we found woodchoppers to make ties, we found 
 steel makers who for the first time in their lives 
 fashioned a rail, we found engineers, and firemen, 
 and switchmen and superintendents, and railroad 
 presidents, each to play his part in fulfilling the 
 common desire for transportation, each able to 
 adapt himself to new duties — and all because of 
 this variation that is in us. 
 
 As a people, we submitted to a ruler across the 
 seas till among our variant individuals there 
 arose some who, different from the rest, adapted 
 themselves to the formulation of a declaration of 
 independence, the framing of a code of principles, 
 the organization of a successful revolution. 
 
 As a people, threatened with the constant peril 
 of cures which were worse than their diseases, 
 there appeared out of the variable mass one who 
 gave us antiseptic surgery. 
 
 [136] 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 Where are those who, a century ago, said that 
 railroads could never be? Where are the Tories 
 of revolutionary times? And where are those 
 barbers of ancient days with their cupping glasses 
 and their lancets and their leeches? 
 
 Ah, where are the pear trees of Eurasia that 
 failed to fit into the scheme of adaptation — where 
 are the geraniums that did not learn to advertise 
 to the bee — and where are the desert cactus plants 
 that could not protect themselves with thorns? 
 ***** 
 
 On and on we go, one step backward some- 
 times, then two steps forward — marking time 
 awhile, then onward with a spurt — the pear tree, 
 the geraniums, the cactus plants, and we — each 
 individual among us a little different from the 
 rest, each with a separate combination of old 
 environment stored within us, finding always 
 an infinity of new environment to bring it out; 
 growing up together, the pear trees, the geraniums, 
 the cactus plants and we, all of us depending on 
 the others, and each of us playing his separate part 
 in the forward march of adaptation. 
 
 On and on we go, because of Infinite Variation. 
 ***** 
 
 And so, from whatever viewpoint we approach 
 the study of plants — whether with an eager eye 
 to the future and the past, or whether with an 
 
 [137] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 eye, opened only a slit, to see simply the things 
 we can touch and feel, we find evidences of adap- 
 tation made possible through variation. 
 
 The violet, responding to kindness, became a 
 pansy. 
 
 The pear, responding to racial tastes, adapted 
 itself to the Orientals and to us. 
 
 Corn, responding to a need for food, produced 
 forty times the kernels which it had produced 
 before. 
 
 The orange, the lettuce, the celery, and every 
 cultivated plant that grows, responding to our 
 market demands, have transformed themselves to 
 meet a readier sale. 
 
 And those daffodil and narcissus seedlings, how 
 eloquently they tell of the adaptation of a plant 
 to fit an individual ideal! 
 
 ***** 
 
 We studied electricity a long time without 
 much apparent practical benefit. Then suddenly 
 electric lights and trolley cars were everywhere. 
 
 We knew the principles of sound vibration for 
 centuries before the telephone and the phonograph 
 appeared, but it took less than a generation to 
 make them universal. 
 
 We dreamed motor carriages three hundred 
 years before we got one, and then, in a decade, we 
 awoke to find our dream come true. 
 
 [138] 
 
ON ADAPTATION 
 
 And almost from the beginning, man has 
 studied the forces which go into the make-up of 
 life without much encouragement, till now these 
 ages of contemplation have begun to crystallize 
 into thornless cacti, stoneless plums, fragrant calla 
 lilies and a thousand other results as definite and 
 as practical as the trolley or the telephone or the 
 omnipresent touring car. 
 
 Who among us shall say what new plants even 
 a decade, now, mav bring forth? 
 
 — On and on we go; one step 
 backward, sometimes; then two 
 steps forward; marking time 
 awhile; then onward with a spurt. 
 
The African Orange Daisy 
 
 For the purpose of illustrating the practical methods of har- 
 nessing heredity, let us take the African Orange daisy and see if , from 
 the variations secured, we may not produce a new pink daisy. 
 
Let Us Now Produce a 
 New Pink Daisy 
 
 A Practical Lesson In 
 Harnessing Heredity 
 
 AN architect, in selecting the materials for his 
 structure, sends for limestone to Bedford, 
 Indiana, or for marble to Carrara, Italy, or 
 for bricks to Haverstraw, N. Y., or for redwood 
 rustic to California. 
 
 In the process of turning his blue print into a 
 building, he draws on the whole world — a little 
 here and a little there — for his supplies. 
 
 So, too, in the production of a new plant on 
 which we wish to try our architectural skill, we 
 must first seek out the things with which to build. 
 Only our search will be not a search for sub- 
 stances, but a search for stored up heredities — not 
 a search for bricks or stone or lumber, but a search 
 
 for living traits. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The sturdy dandelions in our vacant lots, with 
 their parachute-like seed balls, reveal a structural 
 
 [Volume I — Chapter V] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 ingenuity and a fitness to survive which may have 
 cost ten thousand generations of patient struggle. 
 
 The sweetness of our cherries, our grapes, our 
 plums, has been developed only through ages 
 and ages of response to environment, with some 
 environments so oft repeated that they have 
 hardened into heredity. 
 
 The flowers on our lawns may have acquired 
 their colors in Germany, or in Ecuador, or in 
 Siberia; our nuts reflect flavors picked up through 
 a world-wide migration; and even our early 
 vegetables show traits which hark back to times 
 before animals and men came into their lives. 
 
 So, just as the earth has stored up limestone 
 in Indiana, and marble in Italy, and brick-clay in 
 New York, and ten-thousand-year-old redwoods in 
 California, for the architect to draw upon, just so, 
 in a world full of plants, representing an infinity 
 of ancestry with its infinity of heredity, will we 
 find an infinity of traits with which to build. 
 
 If we wish to change the color of a flower, or 
 its scent, or its size, or its adaptability to climate — 
 if we have it in mind to transform a tree or its 
 fruit, or to give any plant a new trait or a new 
 habit — the most practical way is to dig the quality 
 
 we want out of the mass of heredity about us. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "I thought," says some one, "that plants could 
 
 [142] 
 
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY 
 
 be transformed merely by changing the environ- 
 ments in which they grow." 
 
 "So they can," replies Mr. Burbank, "if time is 
 no object. But the quick and economical way is 
 to take advantage of the combined environments 
 of the past which are at our instant disposal; to 
 short-cut to our result by using well established 
 traits and thoroughly formed habits, rather than 
 to spend the years or lifetimes which might be 
 necessary to produce new traits and new habits 
 from the beginning. 
 
 "It is better to seek out, first, what nature has 
 stored away for us, and then to use new environ- 
 ments to improve or intensify traits and habits 
 which already have the advantage of several 
 centuries of start. 
 
 "It is the same principle of economy which we 
 apply to everything we do. 
 
 "So long as there is plenty of coal within easy 
 reach it does not pay us to build machines to 
 utilize the energy of the sun's rays or of the ocean 
 tides. And, similarly, so long as there are untold 
 thousands of plants embodying, in some form, 
 almost every conceivable trait we might desire — 
 untold thousands of plants like the cactus waiting 
 only our attention to make them useful — we can 
 hardly afford to waste time in doing what nature 
 already, laboriously, has done." 
 
 [143] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 The hard part, always, is to make the start. 
 
 We who are late sleepers, for example, know 
 the weeks of discouraging attempts it takes to 
 fix the habit of arising at seven instead of eight, 
 or at six instead of seven. Yet, once we have 
 thoroughly accustomed ourselves to the new hour 
 of awakening, it is just as difficult to get back to 
 the old hour as it was to get away from it. 
 
 It is as if the tendencies within us, having 
 accommodated themselves to each other and to 
 our surroundings, cling together tenaciously to 
 maintain the equilibrium between themselves; 
 when we change our surroundings they adjust 
 themselves to the change with difficulty; but once 
 adjusted, hold together as firmly again as they 
 held before. 
 
 So in plant life; when we transplant a flower or 
 a tree, it shows signs, in accommodating itself to 
 its new surroundings, of evident distress; it looks 
 sickly, its leaves droop, it gives many outward 
 proofs of the inward struggle which it is under- 
 going. 
 
 As soon, however, as its suddenly scattered 
 tendencies have collected themselves, the plant 
 begins an era of immediate improvement, and 
 does as well or better than it did before trans- 
 planting — as well, in fact, as its new surroundings 
 will permit. 
 
 [144] 
 
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY 
 
 If new habits are hard to start, new traits are 
 harder. It is hard to teach a plant to twine when 
 it has never twined before, or to persuade it to 
 be pink when it has always been yellow; just as 
 it is hard to get a boy interested in the study of 
 law when his likes, all his life, have been along 
 the lines of engineering or mechanics. 
 
 In the establishment of a new trait, in fact, 
 the whole motion of life must be interrupted, its 
 momentum arrested, the resulting inertia over- 
 come, and new momentum in a new direction 
 gained. 
 
 But, if every difficulty has its recompense, we 
 are well repaid for the labor of acquiring or 
 instilling a new trait by the fact that, once 
 acquired, it has a tendency of its own to increase 
 and expand and grow. 
 
 The boy who finally gets interested in law, who 
 gets past the point where it becomes an irksome 
 drudgery, begins, at length, to develop a steadfast 
 love for his work so that what was to him, once, a 
 bug-bear at last becomes an absorbing ideal. 
 
 The cactus, for example, which produced its 
 first spines with difficulty, now gets more and 
 more spiny, although the need for spines has 
 disappeared. Our flowers grow more beautiful, 
 our fruits more luscious as their tendencies gain 
 momentum. 
 
 [145] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 We may take it as a rule, almost, that a habit, 
 once fixed, hardens: that a trait, once established, 
 grows stronger and stronger. 
 
 The easiest way, therefore, is to work with 
 heredity, and not against it — to spend a month 
 searching out a desirable trait or habit, rather 
 than to spend a year or a decade trying to 
 overcome an undesirable one. 
 
 ***** 
 
 And, now, to a practical experiment. 
 
 From almost any seed house we may procure 
 the seeds of two African wild flowers. One is the 
 African orange daisy, the other a white daisy of 
 the same family. 
 
 The orange daisy is a sun-loving flower, as its 
 beautiful, rich tint clearly testifies. 
 
 The white daisy, by its whiteness, shows equally 
 unmistakable evidence of an ancestry which has 
 preferred the shade. 
 
 "Bright colored flowers," said Mr. Burbank, 
 "are almost invariably those which have grown 
 in the sun. White flowers are either those which 
 bloom at night, or which, if blooming in the day 
 time, have stayed in the shade." 
 
 "Because the sun reacts with the soil to produce 
 bright colors, while the shade does not?" was 
 asked. 
 
 "No," replied Mr. Burbank. "I prefer to believe 
 
 [146] 
 
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY 
 
 that the bees make the colors. The flowers which 
 grow in the bright light need their brilliance to 
 attract the insects; flowers in the shade are more 
 easily observed if they are light or white in color; 
 it is all a matter of advertising contrast; and, 
 throughout ages and ages, each particular flower 
 has been striving to perfect a color contrast scheme 
 of its own. It may be that the combination of sun 
 and soil makes possible brighter colors than the 
 combination of shade and soil; but wind-loving 
 plants, like corn and trees, which grow in the sun, 
 do not bedeck themselves in colors — only the 
 flowers which find it necessary to attract the 
 insects. 
 
 "In practice, at any rate, the color of a flower 
 is one of the reliable guides in the study of its 
 life-history." 
 
 Taking the orange daisy and its white cousin 
 side by side, we see at once a family resem- 
 blance. The leaf formation, the root formation, 
 the arrangement and the number of petals, the 
 arrangement of stamens and pistils, bespeak the 
 fact that here are two plants of a kind; one orange 
 and one white; the white one taller a little, more 
 graceful perhaps, and slightly less hardy; but 
 cousins, beyond doubt, having within them many 
 parallel strains of heredity. 
 
 Let us assume, then, that the orange of the 
 
 [147] 
 
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 4?tf 
 
 LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 orange daisy is the heredity of ages of sunshine, 
 and the white of the other daisy is the inheritance 
 of ages of shade; that both started from the same 
 point, and that one found itself growing in cleared 
 fields, while around the other developed a forest 
 of shade; so that, finally, as environment piled up 
 on environment and accumulated into heredity, 
 each flower became so firmly fixed in its own 
 characteristics as to constitute a species, as man 
 has chosen to call it, of its own. 
 
 If we take the seeds of the African orange 
 daisy, and plant them in the shade, they will 
 still produce orange flowers. That is stored up 
 heredity. No doubt, if we continued, year after 
 year, to replant them in the shade for a century 
 or so, they would begin to transform themselves 
 to white as the other daisy did. 
 
 If we plant the white African daisy in the 
 sunshine, it will still give us flowers of white — 
 the heredity of ages overbalancing the pull of 
 immediate environment, and needing a long con- 
 tinued repetition of environment to balance and 
 finally overcome it; but if we were to keep it in 
 the sun throughout enough generations, it would, 
 no doubt, bear us flowers of brilliant orange. 
 
 Here, then, is a single plant reflecting two 
 divergent strains of heredity — one orange, one 
 white — one sturdy, one weak — each strain so 
 
 [1481 
 
We Find a White Cousin 
 
 Searching the African daisy family we perceive that one 
 branch has been stranded from its kin and, finding itself in the 
 shade, has become a white daisy. From the many similarities 
 between the two flowers there can be no question that the 
 white and the African orange daisy have a common 
 ancestry — although some scientists classify 
 them as different species, while some 
 merely classify them as dif- 
 ferent varieties of the 
 same species. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 thoroughly fixed that in a lifetime it would be 
 impossible, through pure environment, to over- 
 throw it. 
 
 Let us next take a twenty-foot flower bed, say, 
 divide it in the middle, plant one side solid with 
 the orange daisies, and the other side solid with 
 white daisies, and let the bees and the breezes mix 
 those heredities up to produce for us the new pink 
 daisy which we have planned to produce. 
 
 Up come the orange flowers, and up come the 
 white. The breezes and the bees carry the pollen 
 from flower to flower; the petals fall away, and 
 disclose the pods of fertile seed in which, for the 
 first time, these two strains of heredities are 
 combined. 
 
 In the millions of seeds which we can beat 
 out of these pods, there are some with the white 
 tendencies stored away unaltered, some with the 
 orange tendencies still predominant — some with 
 white pulling evenly against orange to make a 
 red, some with orange slightly stronger than white, 
 and all of the infinity of variation in between. 
 
 We shall find in those seeds the mixed ten- 
 dencies not only of the two species, but of all of 
 the families of two species, and of the individuals 
 of those families; mixed, upset, disturbed — so 
 thoroughly that, not only will the life history of 
 both parents be laid bare in the resulting plants, 
 
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 but through the blends, new characteristics, prob- 
 ably never seen before, will show themselves. 
 
 Here we have taken two plants which, since 
 the beginning, have been storing up traits; each 
 working out its own destiny; each separated from 
 the other, perhaps by a mountain range or a lake, 
 and thus never before brought to a place where 
 those heredities could combine; then in a single 
 season, through combination, we produce the seed 
 for a new daisy reflecting every conceivable blend 
 of those different heredities. 
 
 ***** 
 
 When we plant this seed the following spring, 
 we shall have pure orange daisies and pure white 
 daisies, pink ones, purple ones, yellow ones; 
 daisies large and daisies small; daisies with big 
 black centers, and daisies in which the centers are 
 colored the same as the outside edges. 
 
 We shall find some a deeper orange than 
 the orange daisy because the balance which has 
 determined the established shade of orange has 
 been upset. 
 
 We shall find purer whites than the white 
 daisy ever knew— as a result of the upset. 
 
 We shall find daisies with petals whose color 
 front and back is the same, and daisies with 
 different colors inside and out. 
 
 We shall, in short, find all of the old inherit- 
 
 [152] 
 
A Broadening of the Petals 
 
 One of the first variations which we shall see in our bed 
 
 of crosses is the white daisy shown here in which the color of the 
 
 white parent is unchanged but which has broad petals 
 
 instead of the narrow ones of both parents. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 ances of the flower and of the combinations of 
 them — all of the colors, scents if there be any, 
 shapes, sizes, forms, elements of strength or weak- 
 ness — uncovered before us. 
 
 And between the white and the orange we have 
 but to select the particular pink flower of our 
 fancy. 
 
 If the flower we select, perchance, showed some 
 weakness, or if its tint were a little too light or 
 too dark, or if for any other reason among this 
 infinite color variation we did not find the exact 
 result we sought, another season or another would 
 surety bring it forth; for next year, instead of 
 planting white and orange, we should plant a 
 selection of our new daisies, and instead of getting 
 a combination of two parentages, we should get a 
 combination of combinations. 
 
 Then, having secured the color called for in 
 our original mental blue print, we might find 
 structural improvements to make in the flower — 
 we might want to increase its height or to 
 lengthen the daily period of its opening, or to 
 rearrange its petals into a more chrysanthemum- 
 like form, or to increase or decrease the size 
 of its center — or to accomplish any one of a 
 number of other ideals which we may have set up 
 for our production. 
 
 So on we go, season after season, always 
 
 [154] 
 
More Orange in the Center 
 
 Selecting another white daisy from the patch we find the same broad 
 petals, but with a greater suggestion of orange in the center. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 selecting, getting one this year which bears a 
 podful of seeds for next, with the bees and the 
 winds anxious to carry on the work, narrowing 
 our lines of heredity down and down and down, 
 until finally some day — maybe fourteen months 
 after the experiment began, or maybe fourteen 
 years, we can say: "Here is a plant such as no 
 man ever saw before — here is the exact plant 
 
 which we have planned." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "But will the seed of this new pink daisy," 
 some one asks, "produce more daisies of this same 
 kind of pink?" 
 
 "Of all of the seeds of that daisy," says Mr. 
 Burbank, "there might not be one which repro- 
 duced its parent pink. The seeds of that daisy 
 sown together in a bed might easily show as great 
 a variation as the seeds of the white and the orange 
 showed when they were first planted after the 
 bees and the winds had done their work. 
 
 "But that need be no discouragement. By 
 dividing the roots of the daisy we can, in a single 
 season, from a single plant, produce a whole bed 
 of plants — each similar to the original plant 
 because each, in fact, is a part of the original 
 plant. 
 
 "We should, at the start, then, propagate our 
 pink daisy by dividing the roots. We should 
 
 [156] 
 
A Full Orange Center 
 
 Looking still further into the white daisies 
 
 which we have produced we finally find one which has 
 
 center of solid orange. If we were to take all of the white 
 
 daisies from the patch we should find no two alike but an 
 
 almost infinite range of individual difference. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 find that for practical purposes it would thus be 
 possible to produce all of the daisies we desired. 
 We might never even care to make use of the seed. 
 But if we did, by keeping our new pink daisies 
 together year after year, in eight years, or perhaps 
 ten or fourteen, pink being crossed with pink, and 
 the upset equilibrium restored, we should find that 
 we were getting seeds which came true, or nearly 
 true, to type. 
 
 "You see, we upset heredity to produce varia- 
 tion; then we let it settle down to a balance to 
 perpetuate the particular variation which we have 
 
 chosen." 
 
 ***** 
 
 The architect can always build a second struc- 
 ture better than the first, and the plant improver, 
 likewise, finds in each experiment a multitude of 
 new suggestions for the production of still other 
 changes or improvements. 
 
 In even the handful of daisy variations which 
 can be reproduced here, there are to be seen 
 countless new tendencies, any one of which might 
 lead to the perfection of a wholly different, if not 
 a better flower. 
 
 There are, of course, the variations in size — 
 and those with the long petals show that with 
 encouragement the flower, simply by quantity 
 production and continued selection, might produce 
 
 [158] 
 
More Evidence of Broad Petals 
 
 Taking up the orange and yellow daisies in the 
 
 patch, we find the same tendency toward a broadening of 
 
 the petal which, taking back to old ancestry, evidently, changes 
 
 the appearance of the flower, as can be seen by comparing 
 
 with the direct color photograph print on page 149, 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 an offspring with blossoms three inches or four 
 or more in diameter. 
 
 There are, in the pictures shown here, some 
 which indicate a tendency toward doubleness 
 which gives rise to the thought that the new 
 pink daisy, if desirable, might be entirely filled 
 up with petals so that its center would not show 
 at all, even as its very distant relative, the old 
 maid's marigold, has been filled up — an interesting 
 process which will be explained later. 
 
 Those daisies with the tendency toward dark- 
 ened petals at the inner end might be cultivated 
 and selected until finally they produced an off- 
 spring of a purplish black in the center with only 
 a fringe of color, or, until the whole inside was 
 solid black. 
 
 In other of the variations which are shown, it 
 might be noted that some are pink, or yellow, or 
 of colors in between, inside and out, while others 
 show deep red or purple streaks on the backs of 
 their petals. From these it might reasonably be 
 expected to produce a daisy having one color 
 within, and another color without. 
 
 From the bed of seedlings pictured, with no 
 two daisies exactly alike, there might be prepared 
 a list of a thousand different tendencies, each 
 susceptible of cultivation, each the possible 
 starting point of some new transformation. 
 
 [160] 
 
A Better Orange Than Its Parent 
 
 Looking further among the yellow flowers we find one 
 
 which has a more brilliant orange even than its parent. A 
 
 comparison between this plant and the one opposite page 158 will show 
 
 not only the difference in color, but the fact that this orange 
 
 daisy retains much of the gracefulness of its parent. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 It is only when the life history of a plant, with 
 all of its divergent tendencies, is uncovered in 
 some such way as this, that the plant architect can 
 see the full possibilities of further improvement. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The pink daisy which Mr. Burbank grew 
 especially for the purpose of illustrating this 
 chapter may, or may not, be a desirable produc- 
 tion — it may or may not repay the thought and 
 effort which it cost — but it shows the simplest 
 method which the plant architect has within his 
 reach — a method which, applied in the same way 
 toward the accomplishment of a more utilitarian 
 purpose, has meant and will, more and more, 
 continue to mean, untold fortunes of added wealth 
 
 to the world. 
 
 ***** 
 
 In order that the illustration may be complete, 
 let us sketch some of the possibilities of employing 
 this method. 
 
 Let us begin with some garden vegetable which 
 for centuries has been picking up traits along the 
 lines in which we have encouraged it — working 
 away, always, from the wild, and toward the 
 accomplishment of our ideals. 
 
 Let us say that we have been selecting it, 
 unconsciously perhaps, for its tenderness, or 
 sweetness, or early ripening, or productivity, or 
 
 [162] 
 
Variation on the Outside 
 
 In the same patch we find not only evidences 
 
 of heredity on the face of the flower, but on its back. 
 
 The bouquet pictured here shows, on the back of the petals, yellotv 
 
 tendencies, greenish tendencies and even purple streaks 
 
 such as neither of the parents show. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 along any line which has made it more desirable 
 or more marketable. 
 
 Its evolution, then, has been simply a slow 
 response to a new environment which for the first 
 time in its history included man. 
 
 Suppose, now, that we desire to work, in a 
 single season or a dozen seasons, an improvement 
 in this vegetable which will overshadow all of the 
 improvement which countless generations of culti- 
 vation and unconscious selection have wrought. 
 
 Our first step is to secure its wild counterpart — 
 inedible, maybe, sour, perhaps, tough, no doubt; 
 wholly undesirable as compared with the plant 
 which the seed bought at any grocery store will 
 produce. 
 
 Nevertheless in the wild brother of our plant 
 there is confined an infinity of old heredity just 
 as an infinity of old heredity was confined in 
 those two daisies; and the bees, and the winds, 
 can bring forth variation between the tame and 
 the wild, just as striking and just as widely 
 divergent as the variations in the daisies. 
 
 Perhaps the first attempt to mix up the 
 heredities of the tame and the wild might produce 
 no improvement — only retrogression. But if we 
 keep on mixing heredities and combining com- 
 binations of them, we shall soon see before us 
 evidences of all of the tendencies of the plant — 
 
 [164] 
 
We Could Make a Purple Daisy 
 
 In our daisy patch we find one white daisy, unlike 
 the rest, with deep purple edges on the ends of its petals. If 
 were m search of a purple daisy we might try the seed 
 this, and from the variations resulting produce, at last, a 
 
 daisy which was all of the purple color shown here. 
 
 of 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 tendencies which, though perhaps not desirable, 
 point the way to an end worthy of accomplishment. 
 Then, instead of working with a single wild 
 and a single cultivated plant, if we seek out a 
 dozen wild plants or a hundred of them — some 
 plants from mountain environments and some 
 from swamps, some from rich woodland soil, and 
 some from the desert, we shall get a still better 
 idea of the possibilities stored within the plant — 
 possibilities which need only combination and 
 selection to bring forth a perfected product. 
 ***** 
 
 Or, suppose we have a tree which bears 
 delicious fruit in small quantities. 
 
 Let us then find one with a tendency to over- 
 produce, even though its fruit, in size, flavor and 
 appearance, be inferior. 
 
 In some combination between the two, simply 
 by following the leads which those combinations 
 themselves will give, we shall in a few years, very 
 likely, discover one variation which combines the 
 productiveness of one strain of heredity with the 
 deliciousness of another. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Or, perhaps, we have a plant which bears us 
 berries of wonderful flavor, but too small to be 
 marketable. 
 
 Let us find a plant with large, beautiful berries, 
 
 [166] 
 
Our First Pink Daisy 
 
 Looking over the variations in our patch we 
 
 discover one which has a dirty pinkish color. It is a step 
 
 toward the end which we have started to achieve, yet is far from 
 
 a satisfactory result. The petals are too broad and too 
 
 stubby, and not evenly or gracefully arranged. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 even though they be insipid, and see if, between 
 the two, by matching heredities, there is not to 
 be found some new berry which is luscious, large 
 
 and beautiful. 
 
 **><** 
 
 Or, supposing that in our own particular soil 
 there are varieties we should like to grow which 
 fail to prosper, while other less desirable varieties 
 do well. 
 
 Our problem then is but the combination of 
 heredities to bring the desirability of one with the 
 hardiness of another into a single new plant which, 
 as it were, we make to order. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Or, if there is a variety which will not 
 withstand the rigor of our winters, perhaps it can 
 be combined with a poorer variety which has been 
 educated to them. 
 
 Or, the other way around, if there is a plant 
 which withers in the heat of our summers, perhaps 
 some combination can be effected with an already 
 existing brother or cousin, which, throughout the 
 generations, has conquered the obstacle of heat. 
 ***** 
 
 And so on throughout the whole world-wide 
 range of environment. 
 
 We shall find plants which have grown accus- 
 tomed to the wet, and plants which are hardened 
 
 [168] 
 
A Second Step in Selection 
 
 Looking further we find another pink daisy with longer petals, but 
 too small a center, and still of a muddy color. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 to the dry; plants which thrive in heat and plants 
 which thrive in cold; plants which like sandy soil, 
 and plants which can do well even in adobe clay; 
 plants which have become used to the glare of 
 the sun, and those which live retiring lives in the 
 deepest recesses of the shade; plants which bear 
 flowers large and small, early and late, of short 
 seasons and of long, fragrant and unscented, 
 simple and complex. We shall find fruit-flavors 
 which are sour, sweet, acid, bitter; fruit skins 
 which are smooth, fuzzy; fruits themselves that 
 are large, small, even, irregular, coarse, delicate; 
 we shall find those which will stand shipment 
 across a continent and those which spoil almost 
 as soon as they are picked. 
 
 We shall find a range of differences in wild 
 plants, as great as the range of environments in 
 which they have grown. 
 
 And we shall find a range of differences in 
 cultivated plants as great as the range of differ- 
 ences in races and nations and individuals who 
 
 have grown them. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "I saw an interesting illustration on the relation 
 between heredity and environment at the circus 
 one day," said Mr. Burbank. 
 
 "There, in a wire cage, was a tiny dog together 
 with a lot of monkeys. 
 
 [170] 
 
Try, Try Again 
 
 With all of our pink daisies before us we find one, 
 
 now, with a center which is larger and more brilliant and with 
 
 petals more nearly like those of the parent— slender 
 
 and graceful without seeming stubby. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "While I was watching, a trainer appeared and 
 snapped his whip. 
 
 "The monkeys quit their play with the dog, 
 ran around in a circle, and climbed up the wire 
 of the cage. 
 
 "The little dog followed them, but could not 
 climb. He would start up and drop back, start up 
 again and drop back again. 
 
 "Then he would look down at his feet, and if 
 a dog ever showed surprise, that dog did. He 
 seemed to be wondering why he could not climb 
 as monkeys do. 
 
 "The environment was there, but the heredity 
 was different. 
 
 "We see the same thing in plant life. The 
 sweet peas with their tendrils and the nasturtiums 
 with their leaves can climb like the monkeys, 
 while other plants can not be forced to climb 
 because there is no climbing heredity within them. 
 
 "You may try to make corn climb a hop pole, 
 or to make hops grow straight in the air without 
 a pole or string. But in a lifetime you can not 
 succeed. 
 
 "It is heredity, heredity, heredity. Environment, 
 unless oft-repeated, only serves to bring heredity 
 out. 
 
 "The climbing monkeys and the disappointed 
 dog show us an important truth in our work. 
 
 [172] 
 
At Last the Pink Daisy 
 
 From the pink variations which we have selected from our original 
 
 daisy patch, we finally, perhaps the first season, or perhaps the second, 
 
 secure a pink daisy of the same size, shape and gracefulness 
 
 as the orange daisy with which we started on page 140. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "If we want to take advantage of a climbing 
 tendency in a plant or an animal, let us by all 
 means find a plant or an animal in whose heredity 
 that climbing tendency is a part. Let us not try 
 to teach monkeys to bark, or dogs to swing from 
 the limbs of trees by their tails; let us not try to 
 make corn climb the hop pole, or to transform 
 hops into shade trees. 
 
 "Maybe these things could be done. In fact, 
 with unlimited time, there is no question that 
 they could be done. But with plenty of plants 
 about us with ready-made heredities of which we 
 can avail ourselves in a single season, it would be 
 folly to try to accomplish the same result in a 
 harder way, well knowing that only the twentieth 
 or thirtieth generation ahead of us could see the 
 results of our work. 
 
 "In our search for heredities we shall find 
 many plants which are scarcely worth working 
 with — plants whose environments have not led 
 into heredities which are desirable for our ends. 
 
 "But at the same time we shall find scores and 
 scores of plants in the least expected places — 
 plants like the cactus, which, at first, seem impos- 
 sible of use — which with a little encouragement 
 
 yield us rare heredities for our work." 
 
 ***** 
 
 When the masons, and carpenters, and deco- 
 
 [174] 
 
ON HARNESSING HEREDITY 
 
 rators have finished the architect's house, and the 
 keys are turned over to the new owner — then, 
 and from that moment, the structure begins to 
 depreciate until it crumbles in decay. The 
 furniture movers dent the stair rails, the chil- 
 dren scratch the doors, dust begins to darken and 
 destroy the lustre of polished surfaces; and the 
 sun and night, and the frosts and the thaws, and 
 the rain and the heat, slowly and irresistibly carry 
 the structure on its downward grade. 
 
 But when the architect of plants has combined 
 old traits into the production of his ideal, he has 
 fashioned something which, if his work is well 
 done, the suns, and the rains, and the frosts, and 
 the winds will not depreciate; he has produced a 
 living thing which, in spite of discouragements, 
 and neglect, and abuse, will keep on, and on, and 
 on — improving as it goes. 
 
 ***** 
 
 How few, indeed, are the materials which the 
 architect of buildings has at his command, when 
 compared with the range of living traits which the 
 architect of plants may call into play! 
 
 — Our search, then, is a search for stored 
 up heredities — a search for living traits. 
 
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Short-cuts Into 
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 Better Plants Secured By 
 Hurrying Evolution 
 
 WITH the bees buzzing about in the thou- 
 sands of blossoms on your experiment 
 farm," said a visitor, "I should think 
 that the plants would get all mixed up; I 
 should think that the daisies would be crossed 
 with carnations, and the carnations with balloon 
 flowers, and the balloon flowers with poppies, and 
 
 the poppies with cactus." 
 
 ***** 
 
 If we were to watch a bee at work, we should 
 quickly discover one reason why this does not 
 happen — one reason, at least, why the cherries, 
 and the prunes, and the roses, and the geraniums 
 have not long ago been reduced to a scrambled 
 mess. 
 
 Our observation of the bee would show that, in 
 going from flower to flower, it goes only to flowers 
 of a kind. 
 
 [Volume I — Chapter VI] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 We should see that, if it starts in the morning 
 with clover, it visits no other blossom during the 
 day but clover blossoms. Or if it begins on an 
 orange tree, it passes the cherries, the peaches, the 
 apples and anything else which may be in bloom, 
 but will go miles to find orange trees; or if it starts 
 on onions, then the geraniums and the carnations 
 and the poppies have no attraction for it. 
 
 Which, by the way, is the reason that the bees 
 produce, for themselves and for us, clover honey, 
 and orange honey, and onion honey, each with a 
 distinct flavor of its own. 
 
 But there are other reasons why the flowers do 
 not get mixed up. 
 
 One is that while some flowers advertise to the 
 bees, others advertise only to the humming birds 
 — the bees can not get into the bird flowers and 
 the birds can not get into the bee flowers; some 
 flowers open in the early morning, and some 
 toward noon; some bloom in April, and some in 
 July. 
 
 The pollen granules of some flowers are so 
 large that they can not push their tubes down into 
 the egg nests of flowers with small pistils; there 
 are structural differences between the various 
 families of plants which seem to make cross 
 pollenation almost impossible; and so on through 
 a wide range of reasons why certain plants are 
 
 [178] 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 not readily mated with others — which will lead 
 us, in a later chapter, into the interesting study of 
 
 plant affinities. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The bees helped us to make a pink daisy 
 because, through heredity, the daisies of our first 
 planting gave daisy nectar, though their colors 
 were white and orange. And in seven out of any 
 ten experiments which we might try, we could 
 safely entrust the work of pollenation to the bees, 
 or birds, or other messengers with whom the 
 plants have built up partnerships. 
 
 But in those other three, the most important 
 of the ten, perhaps, we should find that the 
 pollenation would have to be done by hand. 
 
 If, for example, we desired to effect a combina- 
 tion between two flowers, one of which blooms in 
 the spring and the other in mid-summer, the 
 bees could be of no service. We should have to 
 take the pollen of the early blooming flower and 
 carefully save it until it could be applied to the 
 other. 
 
 If we desired to effect a combination between 
 a bird flower and a bee flower, even if in bloom 
 at the same time, we should find it necessary to 
 attend to the pollenation ourselves. 
 
 If we had it in mind to effect a cross between 
 a particularly large, insipid plum and a small, 
 
 [180] 
 
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 highly flavored plum on another tree, or if we 
 desired to effect a cross between any two selected 
 parents, we should find it necessary to do our own 
 work of pollenation. 
 
 ***** 
 
 It would seem that much of the ingenuity 
 evident in nature is directed toward a two-fold 
 end: 
 
 First, toward producing an endless combination 
 of heredities in plants of the same kind — which, 
 to give them a name, we may call crosses. 
 
 And second, to prevent the combination of 
 things out of kind — which, to distinguish them 
 from crosses, we may call hybrids. 
 
 The first aim ensures infinite variation — the 
 mixing up of parallel strains of heredity in such a 
 way that no two living things are exactly alike, 
 and that, in each new balance of tendencies pro- 
 duced, there is the possibility of an improvement. 
 
 The second explains why, though all roses differ 
 from each other, yet all are roses — why, though 
 every living thing has its own individuality, its 
 own personality, each bears the unmistakable 
 characteristics of its kind. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Here and there through nature, nevertheless, 
 are hybrids. Are these accidents — the result of 
 some carelessness, some lapse?" 
 
 [181] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "In nature," said Mr. Burbank, "there are no 
 accidents, no lapses. Everything that is, is a 
 definite part of the Scheme of Things. 
 
 "We see crossing between kinds and realize 
 its purpose, and see its value in the Scheme, 
 because it is going on about us always, everywhere 
 — because it is a quick-moving process which we 
 can observe without doubt or difficulty. 
 
 "But when, on the other hand, we see the 
 provisions in nature against crossing out of kind, 
 those numberless ingenious devices designed to 
 prevent the production of hybrids, we have no 
 right to conclude that hybrids are not a part of 
 the Scheme of Things. 
 
 "They are — else there would be no hybrids. 
 
 "Crossing between things of the same kind is 
 a continuous, active process necessary to the 
 production of better and better individuals. 
 
 "Crossing out of kind is a slower process which, 
 I believe, has just as definite an end as crossing 
 within kinds — excepting that its object, slowly and 
 surely attained, is the production not of better 
 individuals, but of better kinds." 
 ***** 
 
 Let us go back to our African daisies. 
 
 If we read their histoiw aright, there was, 
 first, an orange flower which grew in the open 
 veldt — a flower which accommodated itself to the 
 
 [182] 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 peculiarities of the soil and the air in which it 
 grew, and to its plant, insect, and animal neighbors 
 — so that it became a thriving, successful race, 
 each generation a little stronger — each year seeing 
 it increase in numbers and spread in territory. 
 In its spread, we may well imagine that the 
 winds, or the animals, carried its seed over 
 otherwise impassable barriers — just as human 
 environment carries one son to New York to 
 become a lawyer, another to Pittsburg to become 
 a steel maker, and another to the gold fields of 
 Nevada. 
 
 Thus reaching out, always into new environ- 
 ments, some branch of this daisy family found 
 itself in the midst of a clump of trees — trees which 
 multiplied and grew till they obscured the sun 
 and left the tiny plants in the obscurity of dense 
 shade. 
 
 As the trees grew (and just as slowly, quite 
 likely), the daisies at their feet accommodated 
 themselves to their new environment — they 
 adapted themselves to the shade and moisture — 
 they had less competition, perhaps, from other 
 small plants and so became less sturdy — they 
 changed their color to the one best suited to 
 attract available messengers of reproduction. 
 
 At this point we interrupted the evolution of 
 the African daisy by planting the white and the 
 
 [184] 
 
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 orange together and securing, in the pink one, an 
 immediate blend of their divergent heredities. 
 
 But it requires no stretch of the imagination 
 to believe that, had we left them to their course, 
 the same end would have been accomplished a 
 century, or a thousand centuries, from now; that 
 the same migratory tendency which took the 
 white daisies into the woods would, in time, have 
 brought them out of the woods and into the 
 sunshine; or that the same tendency which got 
 one division of the family into the woods would 
 eventually have taken other divisions to the same 
 woods; and that, sooner or later, there would have 
 been white daisies growing alongside of orange 
 daisies, so that, through the slow processes of 
 nature, the same result which we produced by 
 artificial means would have been achieved. 
 
 And so, in all of our experiments with plants, 
 we shall find that we are not working against 
 evolution, but with it; that we are merely pro- 
 viding it with short-cuts into the centuries to 
 come — short-cuts which do not change the final 
 result, but only hasten its accomplishment. 
 
 And who shall say that we, helping our plants 
 to do in 1913 what without our help they might not 
 be able to do before 3913 — who shall say that we 
 are not elements in evolution just as the bees, and 
 the birds, and the butterflies, and the winds, and 
 
 [185] 
 
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ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 the rains, and the frosts — who shall say that 
 our influence, inestimably greater than any other 
 influence in the life of a plant — is not an intended 
 part of progress in the Scheme of Things? 
 
 ***** 
 
 In hurrying evolution, we can, and do, play a 
 more important part, even, than that of bringing 
 about crosses, or hybrids, which the bees or the 
 birds would never make. 
 
 The greatest service which we render toward 
 the advancement of plant life is that of selection, 
 endless, skillful selection. 
 
 The pink daisy was really, after all, the result, 
 principally, of selection. The important thing we 
 did was not to bring a mass of daisies together 
 for the bees to work on; the important thing was 
 to select orange daisies, and white daisies, with 
 the purpose of producing a pink one. Then, with 
 a bedful of variations, we selected again — selected, 
 this time, for the shade we wanted, and destroyed 
 the rest. 
 
 Afterward, with that pink daisy, we began 
 a still further course of selection, selecting the 
 largest, the hardiest, the tallest; and no matter 
 how long we might continue to grow pink daisies, 
 we should keep on selecting, selecting, selecting — 
 each step in our selection, because it has the 
 human mind behind it— because it is actuated by 
 
 [187] 
 
Some Cactus Seedlings — II 
 
 After making his first selection from the "flats," Mr. Burbank 
 
 transplants his seedlings in the ground, as shown. From the 
 
 time the seedling first shows its head until the final object is 
 
 achieved, there is selection, selection, constant selection. The 
 
 points for which he watches in his process of selection are 
 
 clearly explained in the treatment of each specific subject. 
 
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 purpose and desire — each step in this selection 
 representing an advance, which, without our help, 
 might take a hundred or a thousand years to 
 bring about. 
 
 So, in working out any ideal in plant improve- 
 ment, the first factor and the last one is selection. 
 Selection enters into the ideal itself, it enters into 
 every step of its accomplishment, and it enters 
 into the production of every succeeding plant 
 which represents that accomplishment. 
 ***** 
 
 "If you believe that nature makes no mistakes, 
 and has no lapses, how can you account for the 
 evident unfitness of so many individual plants 
 to survive — how can you account for the 
 wastefulness and extravagance which is apparent 
 throughout all forms of plant life?" 
 
 "Leaving nature out of it for the moment," 
 replied Mr. Burbank, "let us look at the work 
 which I have been doing here for forty years. 
 There has hardly been a time during this period 
 when I have had less than twenty-five hundred 
 experiments under way, and there have been 
 seasons when from three to five thousand were in 
 process. I estimate that, right on this three 
 acre tract, considerably more than one hundred 
 thousand definite, separate experiments in plant 
 life have been conducted, in all. 
 
 [189] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "Some of the experiments which have taken 
 the most time and cost the most money have 
 produced no apparent result; and some of the 
 results which seem most important have been 
 achieved in the simplest way, with the least 
 expenditure of effort. 
 
 "Out of the entire total of experiments tried, 
 there have been not more than two or three 
 thousand which, so far, have resulted in a better 
 fruit, or a better flower, or a more marketable nut, 
 or a more useful plant. 
 
 "On the other hand, I should feel repaid for all 
 the work I have done if only a dozen of my 
 experiments had turned out to be successes. It 
 is the nature of experimentation — we must try 
 many things in order to accomplish a few. 
 
 "And this is just exactly what is going on in 
 nature all the time — excepting that where we 
 might get one success out of forty failures, there 
 might be but one out of a thousand or a million 
 if the plants were left to work out their own 
 improvement, unaided. 
 
 "Then, after all, the unsuccessful experiments 
 are failures only in a comparative sense. 
 
 "If you have ever watched the bridge builders 
 constructing a concrete causeway, you must have 
 seen the false construction which was necessary — 
 the stout wooden structure into which the plastic 
 
 [190] 
 
Mr. Burbank at Work 
 
 In the foreground of this print it will be seen that three 
 
 of the flowers are separated from the rest by being tied with 
 
 white string. As he goes about his gardens, Mr. Burbank picks out 
 
 those flowers which come nearest his ideals and marks them 
 
 thus that their seed may be saved. The entire process of 
 
 marking and recording not only flowers but all other 
 
 plants will be explained in the proper place. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 material was poured — a costly structure in itself 
 which was put up only to be torn down. 
 
 "We can not call this wooden structure extrav- 
 agance or waste, because it was a necessary step 
 in the completion of the work. And so, while, 
 in nature, we find many individuals which are 
 weak — many steps which look like backward 
 steps instead of forward ones — many apparent 
 oversights, yet I prefer to believe, and my own 
 work has shown me that this is true, that these 
 are simply elements in a necessary scheme of 
 false construction, without which the final object 
 could not be achieved. 
 
 "The price of all progress is experiment; suc- 
 cessful experiment is brought about, always, at 
 a terrific expense of individual failures. 
 
 "But who shall say that progress, any progress, 
 is not worth all it costs?" 
 
 ***** 
 
 Nature gets one success out of a million tries; 
 Mr. Burbank has gotten one out of forty. The 
 figures may not be exact, but the basic fact 
 underlying them is none the less important. 
 
 It was simply by eliminating steps and pro- 
 viding short-cuts, and bringing the human mind 
 with its ideals, will, judgment and persistence into 
 the environment of the African daisy that we were 
 able to produce a pink one in a few months when, 
 
 [192] 
 
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 without our influence, nature might easily have 
 
 taken till 3913. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The real work before us, then, is to study 
 nature's processes — to learn to read the history 
 of plants, to uncover tendencies and understand 
 their trends — and then to provide short-cuts so 
 that the far distant improvement may be made 
 a matter of months, instead of centuries. 
 
 These short-cuts, and their application, from 
 this point on, will be our principal study; perhaps 
 a single illustration here, more comprehensive 
 than that of the daisy, will serve to give a clearer 
 idea of their kind: 
 
 Let us take, then, as a specimen, Mr. Burbank's 
 methods in the production of a new cherry. 
 
 First, as with the daisy, there must be an ideal 
 — some particular kind of cherry of which we 
 have made a mental blue print. Let us say that 
 our blue print calls for a large, sweet cherry, 
 which will ripen early and bear long — an eating 
 cherry rather than a canning cherry, so that 
 appearance is a great factor. 
 
 The first step would be to gather in our 
 elements; to pick out a large, beautiful cherry 
 which, after the manner of many large, beautiful 
 fruits, may be more or less insipid in taste; then to 
 select another cherry, size and appearance incon- 
 
 [193] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 sequential, which has the delightful flavor our 
 plans and specifications call for. 
 
 Let us take not one of each of these types, but 
 a number of them, and then when they have 
 bloomed, let us, by hand, cross them back and 
 forth, making in all, we will say, five hundred 
 crosses; each tied with a certain color of string 
 for the purpose of later identification. 
 
 The petals of the blossoms which we have 
 crossed will fall away; long stems bearing green 
 cherries will begin to take their place; and finally, 
 the twigs which we have marked with strings will 
 tempt us with their ripened fruit. 
 ***** 
 
 There is an interesting legend of the French 
 girls who used to take apple boughs in blossom 
 and shake the pollen over the apple flowers of 
 another tree, a legend of the wonderful variation 
 in the apples which they secured. 
 
 And here and there in our work we shall see 
 exceptions to the general rule, which seem to 
 prove that the French legend perhaps was founded 
 on fact. 
 
 These exceptions, which will form the basis of 
 an interesting series of experiments for us later, 
 need have no bearing on our present cherry work. 
 
 For, as a matter of practical fact, we shall 
 find no outward evidence of our work. The 
 
 [194] 
 
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 meat of the five hundred cherries which we have 
 crossed, we can safely assume, will taste the same, 
 and be the same, as though we had let the bees 
 attend to pollenation; the cherries that result will 
 be no different in flavor or appearance than the 
 other cherries on the tree. 
 
 But inside the stony seed of each of those 
 cherries we shall find an indelible living record 
 of what we have done. 
 
 So, disregarding the fruit, we save our five 
 hundred cherry seeds and plant them in a shallow 
 box until they have sprouted and then transplant 
 them till they attain a six or eight inch growth. 
 ***** 
 
 So far, let us see how we have shortened 
 nature's processes. 
 
 In the first place, we have brought together a 
 large, insipid cherry and a homely, small, sweet 
 one, brought them from points, perhaps, two 
 thousand miles apart. 
 
 In the natural course, those two cherries would 
 have spread; they would, eventually, have come 
 together, no doubt; but we have brought them 
 together without delay. Perhaps, in this, we have 
 saved a thousand years. 
 
 In bringing our two kinds of cherries together 
 we have brought not only one of each type, but 
 dozens, or hundreds, each selected for its size, 
 
 [195] 
 

 
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ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 or appearance, or some probable quality which 
 it contains within. In this simple selection of 
 individuals we may have saved other thousands 
 of years. 
 
 With unerring accuracy we have seen that the 
 pollen of the two kinds has been interchanged, so 
 that the five hundred or so resulting seeds w r ill 
 represent the two heredities we wish to mix — and 
 only these. 
 
 Who can estimate how long it might have 
 taken the bees and the winds, working even in 
 neighboring trees, to effect specific crosses with 
 the certainty which we have assured? 
 
 Now, with new heredities bundled up in our 
 five hundred cherry stones, we plant them under 
 every favoring condition in our shallow box, and 
 unless mishap or accident intervenes, we get new 
 cherry trees from all, or, at worst, lose but a few. 
 
 From five hundred other cherries on a tree, 
 leaving the birds to distribute the seed, how many 
 seedlings will there sprout? 
 
 ***** 
 
 And now, with our sprouted cherry seedlings 
 six inches or eight in height, with no man knows 
 how many thousand years of nature's processes 
 cut out, we come to the most important short-cut 
 of all — quick fruiting, so that there may be quick 
 selection. 
 
 [197] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Grafting is no new practice. 
 Virgil wrote verses about it: 
 
 But thou shalt lend 
 Grafts of rude arbute unto the walnut tree, 
 Shalt bid the unfruitful plane sound apples bear, 
 Chestnuts the beech, the ash blow white with the 
 
 pear, 
 And, under the elm, the sow on acorns fare. 
 
 Pliny, within the same century, describes a cleft 
 graft and bespeaks the following precautions: 
 that the stock must be that of a tree suitable for 
 the purpose; that the cleft must be taken from 
 one that is proper for grafting; that the incision 
 must not be made in a knot; that the graft must 
 be from a tree which is a good bearer, and 
 from a young shoot; that the graft must not be 
 sharpened or pointed while the wind is blowing; 
 that the graft should be inserted during the moon's 
 increase; with the final warning, "A graft should 
 not be used that is too full of sap, no, by Hercules ! 
 
 no more than one that is dry and parched." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Graft close down to the trunk," the later 
 theory of grafting has been, "there the sap 
 pressure is highest and the grafted cion has the 
 best opportunity to live. 
 
 "Graft away out at the tip ends of the tree," 
 thought Luther Burbank, "and you will save from 
 two to seven years of time." 
 
 [198] ' 
 
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 It was the same kind of observation as that 
 which led to the production of a spineless cactus; 
 the same keen eye for cause and effect which 
 showed Luther Burbank a new theory of grafting 
 — which opened the way to a practice which 
 
 makes possible, comparatively, immediate results. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Grafting close to the trunk gives the cion a 
 better chance. 
 
 "Give anything a good chance," thought Mr. 
 Burbank, "and it takes its own time to mature. 
 
 "Take away that chance, and responding to 
 the inborn tendency of every living thing to 
 reproduce itself, it will hasten the process without 
 waiting to accumulate strength. Therefore, if we 
 graft away out at the tip ends of the tree, while 
 we make it harder for the cions to exist, yet, in 
 consequence, they will bear us quicker fruit. 
 
 "Furthermore, if we graft close to the trunk 
 we can, at best, attach but six, or eight, or a 
 dozen cions. 
 
 "But if we graft out at the tip ends, we can put 
 five hundred cions on a single tree." 
 ***** 
 
 Grafting was nothing new; but it remained for 
 Luther Burbank to learn the secret of producing, 
 by means of it, five hundred different kinds of 
 fruit on a single tree at the same time, so that a 
 
 [199] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 comparative test might be made. It remained for 
 Luther Burbank, with his theory of starving a 
 living thing to make it hasten its reproduction, to 
 cut from two to seven years out of the long wait 
 for the fruit which is to tell the story of the 
 heredities which were confined within the seed. 
 
 It is possible, at this point, to give but the 
 barest glimpse of the results which Mr. Burbank's 
 improvements in grafting have made possible. 
 Under the proper heading the details of method 
 will be fully explained, together with a summary 
 of the results of hundreds of thousands of grafts, 
 showing that, while the average time of fruiting 
 has been brought down to less than two seasons, 
 in some exceptional cases Mr. Burbank has 
 secured fruit for testing the same season that the 
 graft was made. 
 
 Here, too, it is not possible to convey more 
 than a general idea of his plans which, in every 
 operation, are aimed toward the end of producing 
 the quickest possible test. Whether it be the 
 quince seedlings bearing fruit in six months; or 
 three-foot chestnut trees loaded down with nuts; 
 or twelve year old walnut trees, the size of their 
 seventy year old cousins — all through this work 
 the plan and the method is to save time for the 
 individual plant as well as to provide short-cuts 
 for the process of evolution. 
 
 [200] 
 
An Apple Graft One Year Old 
 
 As evidence of the success of Mr. Burbank's methods 
 
 of producing quick results, the apple graft, in full bearing, after only 
 
 one year's growth, speaks eloquently. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 To go back to our cherry seedling, now six 
 inches above the ground, if we were to depend 
 on nature's processes, by careful planting and 
 cultivation we might produce cherries in seven 
 years; but by short-cutting through grafting, and 
 short-cutting grafting itself through Mr. Burbank's 
 plan, we shall have our cherry crosses in 1914 
 instead of in 1920— five hundred of them all on 
 a single tree, so that they can be plucked and 
 laid out, first, for a visual selection, to pick out 
 the ones which conform to our ideas of color, 
 and size, and beauty; and, second, for selection 
 through taste — to find the one, or the two, or the 
 dozen among them which come nearest the ideal 
 of our original mental blue print. 
 
 Perhaps of the five hundred cherries spread 
 before us, none may fit the blue print; or perhaps 
 one or two, approximating it, may show signs of 
 further improvements which ought to be made. 
 
 Eliminate the rest, and start afresh with 
 those two — begin at the very beginning with them 
 again — mix up their heredities with other 
 desirable heredities from near or far, grow seed- 
 lings, produce quick fruit through grafting, and 
 
 select again. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Every little bit Mr. Burbank has, as the neigh- 
 bors choose to call it, a $10,000 bonfire. 
 
 [202] 
 
A Chestnut Graft One Year Old 
 
 One year before this picture was taken the heavily laden 
 
 branch of chestnuts seen above was a seedling with its possibilities 
 
 unknown. In the brief span of twelve months Mr. Burbank 
 
 has now before him the chestnuts which are to 
 
 be the proof of the success or failure 
 
 of his experiment. 
 
A Burbank Bonfire 
 
 The photograph print here is remarkable in that it is made 
 
 from a color photograph taken at night of one of Mr. Burbank s 
 
 so-called $10,000 bonfires. Such a photograph in even black 
 
 and white would be extremely difficult of accomplishment. 
 
ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
 
 In such a bonfire there would be 499 cherry 
 grafts out of the five hundred which we have just 
 made; there would be 19.999 rose bushes which 
 had been brought to bearing in order to find the 
 twenty thousandth which was not burned — or 
 perhaps twenty thousand rose bushes, the one 
 sought for not having been worth the saving; 
 there would be 1,500 gladiolus bulbs with an easy 
 market value of a dollar a piece, put in the fire 
 after the one, or the two, or the dozen best among 
 them had been selected; there would be a 
 thousand cactus seedlings, representing three 
 years of care and watchfulness, but useless now, 
 their duty done. A ten thousand dollar bonfire, 
 indeed, without exaggeration. 
 
 The builder of bridges can sell the lumber used 
 in his false construction for seconds; and so, 
 too, could Mr. Burbank profitably dispose of the 
 elements of false construction in his work — those 
 millions of seeds and bulbs and cuttings which 
 represent second bests or poorer; but he does 
 not; every step in the process excepting those 
 concerning the final result is obliterated with a 
 ruthless hand. 
 
 "It is better," says Mr. Burbank, "to run the 
 risk of losing a perfected product, through the 
 destruction of the elements which went into it, 
 than to issue forth to the world a lot of second 
 
 [205] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 bests which have within them the power of self 
 perpetuation and multiplication, and which, if we 
 do not destroy them now, will clutter the earth 
 with inferiority or with mediocrity." 
 
 So, we see that, while nature eventually would 
 produce the things which we hurry her to produce, 
 yet the improvements would find themselves in 
 competition with the failures which they cost, the 
 failures outnumbering the improvements, perhaps, 
 a million to one. We see that we not only shorten 
 the process, not only achieve a result out of every 
 forty failures instead of every million, but we give 
 our product the advantage of a better chance to 
 live — we remove from it the necessity of fighting 
 its inferiors for the food, and air, and sunlight 
 
 which give it life. 
 
 ***** 
 
 This, then, is the story of the making of a new 
 cherry to fit an ideal: 
 
 First, selection of the elements; second, com- 
 bining these elements; third, bringing these com- 
 binations to quick bearing; fourth, selecting one 
 out of the five hundred; and then, selection, on 
 and on. 
 
 Interesting and wonderful as the process of 
 pollenation is, ingenious and successful as Mr. 
 Burbank's method of grafting is, important and 
 highly perfected as his methods of growing and 
 
 [206] 
 
- 
 
 
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 I 
 
 -" ' 
 
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 - 
 
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 ... wfjfc^^M&L 
 
 One of Mr. Burbank's Records 
 
 This page from one of Mr. Burbank's record books gives 
 
 an indication of the careful, painstaking manner in which he 
 
 has recorded all of his experiments. With seeds, bulbs and slips 
 
 coming to him continually from all over the world; and with 
 
 more than forty years of work recorded, these books 
 
 form now a large and interesting library. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 caring for seedlings are — these, after all, are but 
 details in the process — minor details, in fact. 
 
 The big element, over-towering them in im- 
 portance, is selection. 
 
 First, the selection of an ideal, then the 
 selection of the elements which are to be blended 
 to achieve it, then the selection of the resultant 
 plant, and after that the selection of better and 
 better individual plants to bear the fruit which 
 
 reproduces the original selected ideal. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Everything we do, then, is simply done to 
 facilitate selection. 
 
 We produce new plants in enormous quan- 
 tities, in order that there may be many from which 
 to select; and having selected, we destroy nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine one thousandths of our 
 work. 
 
 We strive all the while to produce quick 
 results — to eliminate the long waits and to shorten 
 those that we can not wholly eliminate — simply so 
 that our selection may be truly comparative — as 
 that of five hundred fruits tasted in a single after- 
 noon, and so that lingering expectancy may not 
 
 prejudice our judgment, or the result. 
 
 ***** 
 
 It took two thousand years to bring about the 
 juicy American pear by unconscious selection — 
 
 [208] 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 and two thousand years for the Orientals to 
 produce the pear they liked. 
 
 Yet, as plant improvement goes, the pear 
 was quick to respond to its environment; other 
 fruit improvements wrought through unconscious 
 selection have taken ten times as long. 
 
 On the other hand we see Luther Burbank's 
 cherry tree, bearing more than five hundred dif- 
 ferent kinds of cherries at the same time, cherries 
 produced to compare with a mental blue print 
 less than three years old — cherries, from among 
 which, one, at least, will be found, which will 
 lead the way to the achievement of the ideal. 
 
 And, similarly, in every department of plant 
 life, whether it be in farm plants, or garden 
 plants, or forest plants, or lawn plants, or orchard 
 plants, or whether it be in plants which we grow 
 for their chemical content, or for their fibers, or 
 what — we shall find that it is possible to devise 
 short-cuts into the centuries to come, and through 
 combining stored up heredity with new environ- 
 ment, to hurry evolution to produce for us entirely 
 new plants to meet our specific desires. 
 
 — Who shall say that progress, any 
 progress, is not worth all it costs? 
 
How Far Can Plant 
 Improvement Go? 
 
 The Crossroads — Where Fact 
 and Theory Seem to Part 
 
 WHEN I first began this work," said 
 Mr. Burbank, "I was taught that a 
 combination between two varieties of 
 the same species was possible — that I might cross 
 one plum with another plum, for example, to get 
 a new variety — but that the species marked the 
 definite boundary within which I might work. 
 The science of that day was firm in its belief that 
 a seed-bearing, self-reproductive cross between 
 plants of different species was beyond the pale of 
 possibility. 
 
 "A little later on, when I succeeded in com- 
 bining the plum with the apricot, and produced, 
 thereby, a new fruit whose parents were of 
 undeniably different species, the law, or rule, was 
 moved up a peg; and I was told that while it 
 might be possible to effect combinations between 
 different species, yet that must be the limit of 
 
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ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 accomplishment; that combinations between the 
 next higher divisions, genera, were beyond the 
 power of man to effect. 
 
 "Then, when I was able, after a time, to take 
 parents of two different genera, like the crinum 
 and the amaryllis, or the peach and the almond, or 
 a score of others which might be mentioned, and 
 to effect successful seed-producing combinations 
 between them, I began to hear less and less about 
 laws and rules. 
 
 "The fact is that the laws and the rules are all 
 man-made. 
 
 "Nature, herself, has no hard and fast mode of 
 procedure. She limits herself to no grooves. She 
 travels to no set schedule. 
 
 She proceeds an inch at a time — or a league — 
 moving forward, always, but into an unmapped, 
 uncharted, trackless future. 
 
 "I like to think of Nature's processes as end- 
 lessly flowing streams; streams in which varied 
 strains of heredity are ever pouring down through 
 river beds of environment; streams which, for 
 ages, may keep to their channels, but each of 
 which is apt, at any time, to jump its banks and 
 find a different outlet. 
 
 "Just about the time we decide that one of 
 these streams is fixed and permanent, there is 
 likely to come along a freshet of old heredity, or 
 
 [2131 
 
The Amaryllis and Its Parents 
 
 Having effected a combination between species, Mr. Burbank, 
 the amaryllis, made a combination between genera. In this 
 direct color photograph print the improved amaryllis and 
 its tiny parents are shown in truthful proportion. 
 
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ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 a shift in new environment; after which we must 
 
 rebuild our bridges and revise all our maps." 
 
 ***** 
 
 Since the subject of classification is an impor- 
 tant one; and since Mr. Burbank upsets some 
 man-made law or theory on an average of about 
 once in every sixty days, it may be well, at this 
 point, to take a bird's-eye glimpse over the maps 
 and charts which have been worked out. 
 
 With a subject in which the bulk of truth is 
 masked in the obscurity of past ages, and with 
 many men of many minds attacking it from many 
 viewpoints, it is only to be expected that there 
 should be differences of opinion. 
 
 But, for the sake of making the explanation 
 clear, we may, for the moment, overlook minor 
 divergences and view, only, the main backbone 
 plan which meets with the broadest acceptance. 
 
 To begin at the beginning, we see, first, 
 spread before us, three kingdoms, whose boundary 
 lines are well surveyed, and whose extent is 
 all-inclusive. These, as our Duffy's second reader 
 told us, are the mineral, the animal, and the 
 vegetable kingdoms. 
 
 Our interest lies now in the vegetable kingdom, 
 which divides itself into six (perhaps seven) 
 branches, or subkingdoms, called phyla. 
 
 The lowest of these subkingdoms includes 
 
 [217] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 only those vegetables of the simplest type which 
 reproduce by splitting themselves in two. In 
 this subkingdom live the death-dealing bacteria, 
 which bring about such human diseases as tuber- 
 culosis and malaria, or such plant diseases as 
 black rot; and the good bacteria, too, which are 
 everywhere, helping us to digest our food, and 
 without whose help the higher subkingdoms of 
 plant life could not exist; and other plants of the 
 same grade. 
 
 The next subkingdom, higher by a step, includes 
 the yeast which we use to raise our bread, or those 
 microscopic vegetables which turn hop juice into 
 beer, apple juice into cider and rye juice into 
 whisky; and others. Those who prefer to chart 
 seven subkingdoms instead of six, divide this 
 branch into two, making the slime-molds a 
 separate phylum. 
 
 The next subkingdom, ascending the scale, 
 includes, among others, the mosses and liverworts. 
 
 From these it is but a step to the next sub- 
 kingdom, which includes the ferns — the highest 
 type of flowerless plants, and the first, in the 
 ascending scale, to exhibit a complete development 
 of root, stem and leaf. 
 
 The final subkingdom, and the one into which 
 our work principally takes us, embraces those 
 plants which produce seeds. 
 
 [218] 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 Taking, then, this latter, the highest sub- 
 kingdom, we find that it separates into two broad 
 divisions, called classes, one of which is distin- 
 guished by bearing its seeds in enclosed packages 
 called ovaries; the other bearing seeds which are 
 exposed, or naked. The first of these classes 
 includes the vast majority of seed-bearing plants; 
 the other including principally those trees, like 
 the pine and the cypress, which bear their seeds 
 in open cones. 
 
 Next, on our chart, we shall find that the class 
 is subdivided into orders. The order represents 
 a collection of related families. As an example, 
 the order Rosales is made up of the rose family, 
 the bean family, the cassia family, the mimosa 
 family and twelve other families closely allied. 
 
 Below the order comes the family — a division 
 which is still broadly inclusive; the rose family 
 for example taking in not only the rose, itself, 
 but the apple, the blackberry and sixty-two other 
 plants whose close relationship might not at first 
 be evident. 
 
 From the family we next narrow down to the 
 genus — which separates the rose from the apple 
 and the blackberry and gives each its own classi- 
 fication. 
 
 Beneath the genus there comes the species. 
 
 And beneath the species the variety. 
 [219] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 We may take it as a safe observation that the 
 simpler the form of life, the less the tendency 
 toward variation; the more complex, the greater 
 the opportunity for individual differences. 
 
 So, in the simpler subkingdoms, and in the 
 more general divisions down to and including the 
 order, the lines of division are more readily 
 differentiated, and the work of classification has 
 been fairly free from quarrels. 
 
 But as the order breaks up into families, and 
 the family breaks up into genera, and the genus 
 breaks up into species, and the species breaks up 
 into varieties, and variations tend more and more 
 to carry the individual away from its kind, there 
 are to be found dissentions and differences of 
 opinion which could hardly be chronicled in 
 
 twelve full volumes of this size. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Nor is this divergent opinion surprising. 
 
 It is said that, of an iceberg floating in the sea, 
 but one-eighth is visible to the surface observer, 
 while seven-eighths of the mass are submerged 
 beneath the water line. 
 
 Who, from looking at the one-eighth in view, 
 could be expected to draw an accurate detail 
 picture of the iceberg as a whole? 
 
 The vegetable kingdom which presents itself 
 to our vision today has been under observation, 
 
 [220] 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 at most, but a few hundred years. It has behind 
 it, who shall say, how many tens of thousands of 
 generations of ancestry which, coming before 
 man, went by unobserved — yet which, under new 
 environment, are continually bursting forth to 
 confuse us. 
 
 How can man, with only one ten-thousandth 
 of his subject revealed to him, be expected to make 
 charts or maps which shall withstand onslaught, 
 
 or be superior to criticism? 
 
 ***** 
 
 For the sake of ready understanding, we may, 
 however, summarize plant life into the broad 
 classifications outlined above. 
 
 First, the vegetable kingdom, which includes 
 all plants. 
 
 Second, the subkingdom or phyla, six or seven 
 in number. 
 
 Third, the class, which ranks above an order 
 and below a phylum. 
 
 Fourth, the order, which ranks between the 
 class and the family. 
 
 Fifth, the family, which ranks below an order 
 but above the genus. 
 
 Sixth, the genus, which ranks below a family 
 but above the species. 
 
 Seventh, the species, which ranks below a 
 genus and above the variety. 
 
 [221] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Eighth, the variety, which ranks below a species 
 and above the individual. 
 
 Yet with but one certainty in the entire scheme 
 of classification — that certainty being the indi- 
 vidual, itself. 
 
 Men may tell us that a plant belongs to one 
 genus or to another, that it is of this species, or 
 of that — or that it is even of a different family 
 than at first we thought — but these, after all, are 
 but theories, built up about the plant by man — 
 theories which serve merely as guide posts in our 
 work. 
 
 The plant itself, the individual plant, if we but 
 watch it and give it an opportunity to show, will 
 tell us for itself, beyond dispute or denial, just 
 what manner of plant it is — just what we may 
 hope for it to do. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Next in importance to classifying plants, from 
 a superficial standpoint, is a method of naming 
 them. 
 
 When we go to the florist's we ask for roses, 
 or marigolds; when we go to the fruiterer's we 
 talk to him of oranges, and plums, and cherries; 
 when we go to the green grocer we ask for lettuce, 
 or cabbage, or peas; when we select furniture we 
 talk of it as being made of mahogany, or oak, or 
 walnut. 
 
 [222] 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 Thus, commonly, we call all forms of plant 
 life by their nicknames — and by their nicknames 
 only do most of us know them. 
 
 One reason, likely enough, is that the scientific 
 names of plants are in Latin — for the good reason 
 that the Russian, or Swedish, or Spanish, or 
 American scientist is able to describe his work, 
 thus, in a common language. 
 
 In giving a plant its Latin name, no attention 
 is paid to its class, order or family. 
 
 The name of the genus becomes its first name. 
 
 The name of the species follows. 
 
 And the name of the variety, when given, comes 
 last. 
 
 Thus, in writing the scientific name for an 
 apricot, or a plum, or a cherry, we should give 
 first the name of the genus, which, for all of these, 
 is Primus. 
 
 If we are to describe, for instance, a cherry of 
 the species Avium, we should write, following the 
 name of the genus, the name of the species, as 
 Prunus Avium. 
 
 And then, if we were to write the name of some 
 particular improvement in that species of cherry 
 which Mr. Burbank had wrought, say the famous 
 Burbank cherry, we should follow the names of 
 the genus and the species with the name of that 
 variety, as Prunus Avium Burbank. 
 
 [223] 
 

 
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 capsules of 
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 shown her 
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 unusual sizi 
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 poppies 
 
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 variatio, 
 
 absence 
 
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ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 . Or, if we were to prepare a technical article, 
 about this species, we should write Primus Avium 
 at the first mention of it, and contract it to P. 
 Avium when mentioning it thereafter. 
 
 In this work, in order to gain clearness with 
 the least effort, and to avoid confusion through 
 the use of disputed terms, it has been decided, so 
 far as possible, to call plants by their commonest 
 names; going, wherever necessary, into a brief 
 explanation in order to identify the plant clearly 
 in the mind of the reader. 
 
 Our work is to be a practical work, and the 
 effort which it would cost to master thousands 
 of Latin names might, it is believed, be better 
 expended in a study of the principles and the 
 practice. 
 
 There arises, unfortunately, a confusion 
 through use of common names. The California 
 poppy, for example, is not a poppy at all; but for 
 the purposes of this work it has been deemed best 
 to call it the California poppy, by which name it 
 is generally known, rather than to refer to it as 
 Eschscholtzia; and so on throughout the list of 
 other plants. 
 
 No common name is used, however, which is 
 not to be found in the dictionary; so that those 
 whose scientific interest is uppermost have but to 
 refer to their Webster, which gives a greater 
 
 [225] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 wealth of detail than could be hoped for in a 
 glossary or an appendix to these volumes. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "A few years after I came to Santa Rosa," said 
 Mr. Burbank as he was sitting on his porch one 
 evening, "I was invited to hear a new minister 
 preach on a subject which, I was assured, would 
 be of interest to me. 
 
 "It was not my own church, so I tried to find 
 my way to an unobtrusive seat in the rear, where 
 I should disturb no one. But, as if by prearrange- 
 ment, the usher would not have it that way — I was 
 led to the front center, where I was given a pew to 
 myself. 
 
 "As soon as the sermon began, I saw the reason 
 for it all. That preacher, with a zeal in his heart 
 worthy of a better cause, had evidently planned 
 a sermon for my own particular benefit. He was 
 determined to show me the error of my ways. 
 
 "He began by describing 'God's complete 
 arrangements' as evidenced in the plants about 
 us, and rebuked me openly for trying to improve 
 on the creations of Omnipotence. He held me to 
 ridicule as one who believed he could improve 
 perfection; he predicted dire punishment for 
 attempting to thwart Nature and tried to persuade 
 me, before that audience, to leave God's plants 
 alone. 
 
 [226] 
 
The Primus Berry 
 
 A production of Mr. Burbank's which shows how, 
 by crossing plants out of kind, we are helping them to start 
 species which will be free from inherited disadvantages, 
 and bear us, bountifully, better crops. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 "Poor man ! Whatever may have been thought 
 of his good taste, or his tact, or his judgment, I 
 could hardly take offense at his sentiments — for 
 they really reflected the thought of that day. 
 
 "Poor man! He could not see that our plants 
 are what they are because they have grown up 
 with the birds, and the bees, and the winds to help 
 them; and that now, after all these centuries of 
 uphill struggle, man has been given to them as 
 a partner to free them from weakness and open 
 new doors of opportunity. 
 
 "He could not see that all of us, the birds, and 
 the bees, and the flowers, and we, ourselves, are 
 a part of the same onward-moving procession, 
 each helping the other to better things; nor could 
 many of the others of his time see that. 
 
 "And the botanists of that day, less than four 
 short decades ago, found their chief work in the 
 study and classification of dried and shriveled 
 plant mummies, whose souls had fled — rather than 
 in the living, breathing forms, anxious to reveal 
 their life histories. 
 
 "They counted the stamens of a dried flower 
 without looking at the causes for those stamens; 
 they measured and surveyed the length and 
 breadth of truth with never a thought of its 
 depth — they charted its surface, as if never 
 realizing that it was a thing of three dimensions. 
 
 [228] 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 "And that is why those who had devoted their 
 lifetimes to counting stamens and classifying 
 shapes told me, through their writings, that a cross 
 might be made within species, but never between 
 species; that is why when I did make a cross 
 between species they looked no further into the 
 truth, but simply moved up a notch, and said, 
 'Very well, but you cannot make a cross between 
 genera'; that is why, when I did that very thing, 
 not once, but scores of times, that type of scientist 
 lost interest in rule making and went back to 
 
 stamen counting." 
 
 ***** 
 
 To realize the point more clearly, let us observe 
 for a moment the common tomato — which belongs 
 to that large division of plants, the nightshade 
 family. 
 
 Just as the rose family includes not only the 
 rose, but the apple and the blackberry and 
 sixty-two other plants, so the nightshade family 
 includes seventy-five genera and more than 
 eighteen hundred species. 
 
 The classification is built around structural 
 facts, such as that plants of this family originally 
 had alternate leaves with five stamens and a two- 
 celled ovary, or egg chamber, each cell containing 
 many eggs. 
 
 These structural similarities in the plants of 
 
 [229] 
 
Improved Tigridias 
 
 This South American plant with which Mr. Burbank has 
 
 experimented now bears blossoms six or seven inches in diameter, of 
 
 wonderful formation and color and with striking tiger spots 
 
 which add to the weird beauty of the flower. 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 this family trace back to a common parentage and 
 fully justify the classification of these seventy-five 
 genera in a single family. 
 
 If we were to look not at the structure, 
 however, but at the seventy-five plants themselves, 
 then, and only then, could we fully realize the 
 wonders which environment, toying with that 
 common heredity within the plant, has wrought. 
 
 We should see, among the seventy-five brothers 
 and sisters of that family if they were spread 
 before us, the poisonous bitter-sweet, and the 
 humble but indispensable potato; the egg plant 
 and the Jerusalem cherry; the horse nettle and the 
 jimson weed; the tobacco plant and the beautiful 
 petunia; and the tomato itself. 
 
 We should see seventy-five plants with original 
 structural similarities, yet differing, in every other 
 way, as night differs from day; and we should be 
 able to trace, if we observed closely enough, the 
 points at which, in the history of this family, hew 
 environment, oft repeated, has hardened into 
 heredity, subject to the call of still newer environ- 
 ment, which has not been lacking to bring it out; 
 we should be able to trace out, by easy stages, 
 why one branch ran to the poisonous bitter-sweet, 
 another to the potato with its food product below 
 the ground, another to the tomato with its 
 tempting fruit displayed on vines above; another 
 
 [231] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 to tobacco, valued for its chemical content — and 
 so on throughout all of the variations. 
 
 The tomato, we should see, was the last of the 
 family to fall into a violent change of environment. 
 
 A tropical plant, bearing fruits about the size 
 of a hickory nut and not believed to be edible, 
 the tomato found its way into the United States 
 within the past century. 
 
 At first, the tomato plant was prized merely 
 as an ornament; it was grown as we now grow 
 rose bushes, and the fruit was looked upon 
 as a mantel decoration, until, by accident, it was 
 discovered to be edible. There are, in fact, many 
 such ornamentals today which might bear us 
 edible fruit. One, in particular, the passion 
 flower, which Mr. Burbank is developing, will form 
 the subject of an interesting description later on. 
 
 Following the discovery that the tomato was 
 edible came the same course of unconscious selec- 
 tion that falls to the lot of every useful plant. The 
 biggest tomatoes were saved, the better tomatoes 
 were cultivated. 
 
 In the environment of the tropics, the tomato 
 fruit of hickory nut size was ideal; it cost less 
 effort to produce than a larger tomato; it contained 
 sufficient seeds to insure reproduction. 
 
 But with the advent of man into its environ- 
 ment, its seed chambers increased in number, the 
 
 [232] 
 
Variable Potato Seedlings 
 
 While the tomato has been so thoroughly fixed in a few 
 
 decades that many varieties reproduce true to seed, its cousin, 
 
 the potato, as explained in Chapter II, runs into wonderful variations 
 
 when its seed is planted. The potato seedlings pictured 
 
 here are some which were grown from the seed in 
 
 the potato seed balls shown on page 57. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 meat surrounding the seeds increased in quantity 
 and improved in quality; so that in virtually half 
 a century the large, luscious, juicy tomato we now 
 know is universally to be found in our markets, 
 in season and out. 
 
 No man can say how many thousands or tens 
 of thousands of years it took wild environment to 
 separate the tomato from the seventy-four others 
 of its family. Yet, in less than half a century, see 
 what changes man, as an element of environment, 
 has worked! 
 
 We take the seeds of our Ponderosa tomatoes 
 and set them out in a can or a shallow box, and 
 midsummer brings us new Ponderosas — so well 
 have we succeeded in fixing the traits we desire. 
 
 But were we to take those same seeds to the 
 tropics and plant them under the conditions of 
 only fifty years ago an entirely different thing 
 would happen. 
 
 The first generation would be Ponderosas, more 
 or less like those we grow here. 
 
 But in the second generation, or, at latest, the 
 third, the seeds of those very Ponderosas, when 
 planted, would grow into vines which bear the 
 old type of tomato — the size of a hickory nut— an 
 immediate response, almost, to the wild tropical 
 environment which prevailed before man came 
 along. 
 
 [234] 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 From the botanists of only a century ago, 
 examining only dead tomato blossoms from the 
 tropics, and dried tomato fruits the size of hickory 
 nuts — how could we expect an inkling, even, of 
 what the tomato with less than half a century of 
 cultivation could become? 
 
 How short, indeed, the time which environment 
 requires to transform a plant beyond recognition 
 — especially when man, either consciously or un- 
 consciously, becomes a part of that environment! 
 
 And, knowing what the Chinese did to the pear, 
 what the American Indian did to corn, what our 
 own fathers and mothers did to the tomato, can 
 we not see that, while stamen counting has its 
 place, yet, for real achievements in plant improve- 
 ment, we must look for help not so much to the 
 stamen counters as to the plants themselves as new 
 
 environment brings their old heredities into view. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Mr. Burbank has made combinations between 
 species; he has made combinations between 
 genera, not once, but many times; fertile, seed- 
 bearing combinations. 
 
 How far, then, can plant combination be 
 carried? Is it possible to go above the genus and 
 make combinations between families? Or to go 
 above the family and make combinations between 
 the orders? Or to go above the orders and make 
 
 [235] 
 
Some Blackberry Canes 
 
 It is possible, from the appearance of the cane of the 
 
 blackberry, at certain stages, to predict the color of the fruit 
 
 which is later to be borne. The application of this short-cut is fully 
 
 explained under a later heading. The picture above 
 
 shows a range of variation produced by crossing. 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 combinations between the classes? Or to go above 
 the classes and make combinations between the 
 subkingdoms? 
 
 "Give us time," says Mr. Burbank, "and we 
 could accomplish anything. 
 
 "The limitations of our work are not limitations 
 imposed by Nature; they are limitations imposed, 
 alone, by the clock and the calendar. 
 
 "Here we are, fighting ten thousand years of 
 hardened heredity with five or ten years of new 
 environment; sometimes we succeed; it is no 
 wonder that more often we fail; in five years, 
 however, we can usually work a transformation; 
 if we could afford to spend fifty years on a single 
 plant, we could upset every rule that has ever been 
 formulated about that plant; and if we could 
 spend five thousand years, we could, simply by 
 guiding Nature, accomplish, well, anything. 
 
 "Every season we are working changes which 
 Nature would take ages to work ; but from a 
 practical standpoint we must seek always to take 
 advantage of the old heredities which Nature has 
 stored up — to make them serve our ends, because 
 this can be done quickly; rather than to create and 
 fix new heredities which might take so long as to 
 
 rob our work of its usefulness." 
 
 ***** 
 
 Here, then, is Mr. Burbank's bird's-eye view: 
 
 [237] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Before us is a world of living, onward-march- 
 ing plants — plants which have made, are making, 
 and will continue to make, their own rules as they 
 go along. Here, before us, too, is the propaganda 
 of our subject with its maps, plans, charts, rules, 
 laws, theories, beliefs, built up too fixedly, too 
 arbitrarily, too superficially, perhaps, but very 
 completely, nevertheless, around this onward- 
 marching mass. 
 
 Let us use to the utmost all the help that science 
 can give; to save time, let us accept the laws and 
 the rules, let us have confidence in the maps and 
 the charts, until the plants themselves show our 
 error. 
 
 Let us search, always, for stored up heredities 
 to convert to our use, just as we would seek stored 
 up diamonds, or gold, or coal, instead of trying, 
 by chemistry, to produce them. 
 
 Let us realize, always, that everything is 
 possible with time; but let us seek out all the 
 short-cuts we can. 
 
 For, after all, we have so little of Time! 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 With time as our limiting factor, then, we shall 
 find, in plant work, many things which we cannot 
 hope to accomplish. 
 
 We shal] find plants, of course, of different 
 species, and different genera — a surprising num- 
 
 [238] 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 ber, in spite of the old belief, which will combine 
 readily to produce fertile offspring constituting 
 a new species or a new genus. 
 
 We shall find plants of different species or 
 genera which combine to make a sterile offspring 
 — a mule among plants. 
 
 And we shall find plants which can hardly be 
 combined at all — plants in which the pollen of one 
 seems to act as a definite poison on the other — 
 plants with large pollen grains which cannot push 
 their tubes down the pistils of smaller flowers — 
 and plants which, through long fixed heredity, 
 seem as averse to combination as oil seems averse 
 to combining with water. 
 
 "But no man," says Mr. Burbank, who has just 
 read this, "can tell until he has tried — tried not 
 
 once, but thousands and thousands of times." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "What is that?" asked a seedsman who was 
 visiting Mr. Burbank. 
 
 "That is a Nicotunia," replied Mr. Burbank, 
 "and you are the first man in the world who has 
 ever seen one. It is the name which I have given 
 to a new race of plants produced by crossing the 
 large flowering nicotianas, or tobacco plants, with 
 petunias. It is, as you can see, a cross between two 
 genera of the nightshade family." 
 
 "H'm!" said the seedsman. 
 
 [240] 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 "You know the secret now," said Mr. Burbank, 
 "but if you think that you can produce these nico- 
 tmiias as you would hybrid petunias, or crossbred 
 primroses, go ahead and try; there is no patent on 
 their manufacture; but if the five hundredth cross 
 succeeds, or even the five thousandth, under the 
 best conditions obtainable, you will surely be very 
 successful. I do not fear any immediate competi- 
 tion. This one cost me ten thousand tries." 
 
 Perhaps those who have said that species could 
 not be combined with species, or genus with genus 
 have tried only once or twice or a dozen times. 
 Perhaps Mr. Burbank's patience and persistence 
 
 account for some of the upset laws. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Why not content ourselves to work within 
 varieties as the bees work?" asks some one. 
 
 "Because by going out of the varieties and 
 combining between species, and going out of the 
 species and combining between genera, we mul- 
 tiply almost infinitely the combinations of old 
 heredities which we may bring into play — we 
 lessen the work which we have to make environ- 
 ment do by spreading before us more combinations 
 of heredity — we accomplish in two years what 
 otherwise might take two lifetimes." 
 
 In all, Mr. Burbank has made one hundred 
 and seventy-nine combinations between different 
 
 [241] 
 
Variations in Walnuts 
 
 All of the variations pictured above were secured by crossing. 
 
 Mr. Burbank, in his walnut work, has grown nuts by the wagon load 
 
 for the purpose of finding one or two which came near his ideal. 
 
ON FACT VS. THEORY 
 
 species and different genera, treated elsewhere, 
 all of which were thought to be impossible. 
 
 It was such combinations as these which en- 
 abled him to perfect the cactus, to produce the 
 plumcot, to make the Shasta daisy — in fact, it was 
 Luther Burbank's lack of respect for man-made 
 laws, when plants told him a different story, that 
 has given the world eighty per cent, of his produc- 
 tions — that has led him to ninety per cent, of his 
 discoveries in practical method. 
 
 "The only reason," said Mr. Burbank, "that we 
 do not combine between families, and between 
 
 orders, and classes, is that we haven't the time." 
 
 ***** 
 
 So we see that the science of plant life is not 
 an exact science, like mathematics, in which two 
 and two always equal four. It is not a science in 
 which the definite answers to specific problems 
 can be found in the back of any book. 
 
 It is a science which involves endless experi- 
 menting — endless seeking after better and better 
 results. 
 
 Theories are good, because, if we do not permit 
 them to mislead us, they may save us time; laws, 
 and maps, and charts, and diagrams — systems of 
 classification and of nomenclature — all these are 
 good, because, if they are faulty, they still reveal 
 to us the viewpoint of some one who, with dili- 
 
 [243] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 gence, has devoted himself to a single phase, at 
 least, of a complex subject. 
 
 But we must remember that the theories, most 
 of them, are built around dead plants. 
 
 While the facts we are to use are to be gathered 
 from living ones. 
 
 So, every once in a while, when we come to a 
 crossroads where that kind of theory and this kind 
 of fact seem to part, let us stick to the thing which 
 the living plant tells us, and assume that evolution, 
 or improvement, or progress, or whatever we 
 choose to call it, has stolen another lap on the 
 plant historians. 
 
 And let us remember that the fact that ours is 
 not an exact science, with fixed answers to its 
 problems, is more than made up for by the 
 compensating fact that there seems to be no limit 
 to the perfection to which plant achievements may 
 be carried — no impassable barrier, apparently 
 (save time — which limits us all, in everything), 
 beyond which our experiments may not go. 
 
 — Nature did not make 
 the laws; she limits her- 
 self to no grooves; she 
 travels to no set schedule. 
 
Some Plants Which Are 
 
 Begging for 
 Immediate Improvement 
 
 A Rough Survey of 
 the Possibilities 
 
 I HAVE finished making an analysis of a number 
 of your fruits," wrote a chemist to Mr. Burbank, 
 "and I find that pectic acid, which is so apt to 
 play havoc with the human digestive tract, and 
 which accounts for the inability of many people 
 to enjoy raw fruit, is almost entirely absent." 
 
 "It must be, then, that I don't like pectic acid," 
 commented Mr. Burbank as he read the letter. 
 
 "It never occurred to me to give the matter of 
 its elimination a thought; so, the only way I can 
 account for the lack of it is that, as I have selected 
 my fruits by tasting, I have preferred those which 
 
 were low in this content." 
 
 * * * * + 
 
 It would be no small achievement to rebuild 
 our fruits and grains and vegetables to fit the 
 finnicky stomachs which sedentary occupations 
 
 [Volume I — Chapter VIII] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 are giving us. Yet such a transformation is one 
 which might be easily wrought in a few years 
 through simple selection, and serves, here, to 
 illustrate the vast range of possibilities in plant 
 improvement which only wait willing hands and 
 active minds to turn them into realization. 
 
 Immediate possibilities for plant improvement, 
 indeed, outnumber the improvements which have 
 already been w r rought, ten thousand to one. 
 
 It is planned in these books to treat of the 
 possibilities of each plant separately, in connection 
 with the description of the work which has 
 already been done, since each of Mr. Burbank's 
 improvements not only suggests countless other 
 improvements which he has not had the time to 
 take up, but indicates, in a measure, the method 
 by which their accomplishment may be brought 
 about. 
 
 It may be well, at this point, however, to 
 survey, roughly, the range of possibilities for 
 improvement, so that, as we go along, we may 
 have an appreciative eye for the value of the 
 things which are clamoring to be done. 
 ***** 
 
 The incident of the pectic acid is but one of 
 many unexpected improvements which Mr. Bur- 
 bank has discovered in his productions after his 
 first object has been achieved. 
 
 [246] 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 Possibly as striking an illustration of this as 
 could be chosen is one which made itself evident 
 in the plumcot. 
 
 So intent was Mr. Burbank on his purpose of 
 combining two species, the plum and the apricot — 
 so single-minded was his idea of producing a fruit 
 which should reflect its double parentage in flesh 
 and flavor — that he lost sight of some of the 
 incidental possibilities of such a combination. 
 
 The cross having been made, however, he set 
 about to study the other new characters which the 
 combination showed. 
 
 Some of these were recognized as being of 
 little practical value. 
 
 The foliage of the plumcot tree, for example, 
 does not necessarily resemble the plum or the 
 apricot, being intermediate and representing a 
 perfect blend. Though, it may be noted in passing, 
 the foliage of a cross or hybrid often takes on the 
 characteristics of either one parent or the other, 
 or may consist of varicolored leaves, or may even 
 present leaves of two distinct kinds. This is an 
 interesting and important subject which will be 
 clearly illustrated with direct color photographs 
 later. 
 
 Finding the plumcot foliage a blend, Mr. Bur- 
 bank was not surprised to discover that the root 
 of the plumcot tree resembled in color neither the 
 
 [247] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 bright red of the apricot, nor the pale yellow of 
 the plum, but was of an intermediate shade. 
 
 Of the thousands of characteristics of the 
 parent species as they were subjected to examina- 
 tion and analysis, the most startling was found in 
 the surface texture of the fruit itself — one of the 
 most novel effects, in fact, to be seen in all Nature. 
 
 The apricot has a fine velvety skin which serves 
 not only as a protection to the fruit from insects 
 and from the sun's withering rays, but which adds 
 greatly to its attractive appearance. 
 
 Plums, usually, are overspread with a delicate 
 white or bluish bloom, powdery in form, easily 
 defaced by the slightest handling. This bloom 
 adds a touch of delicacy and beauty to the fruit, 
 suggests its freshness, and intensifies the attrac- 
 tiveness of the colors underneath. 
 
 In the early plumcots it was noticed that many 
 had a softer, more velvety skin than the apricot, 
 and that this persisted after much handling. 
 Then, as the characteristics began to settle, after 
 several generations of plumcots had appeared, it 
 was noticed that the new fruit not only had the 
 attractive velvety skin of the apricot, but that 
 this velvet overspread and protected a bloom like 
 that of the plum, giving the plumcot the plum's 
 delicacy of appearance, with the apricot's hardi- 
 ness to handling. 
 
 [248] 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 When this blend of bloom and velvet was 
 noted, experiments were made to determine how 
 much handling it would withstand. A dozen 
 plumcots were passed around from hand to hand 
 possibly hundreds of times, and then left to decay, 
 the condition of the velvet bloom being noted from 
 time to time. 
 
 While there was a slight decrease in the bril- 
 liancy of the bloom, yet it persisted to a surprising 
 degree even after the flesh of the plumcot had 
 decayed. 
 
 The accompanying color photograph prints 
 show clearly the difference in appearance between 
 the plum and the plumcot after being subjected 
 to handling. 
 
 The value of this characteristic is greater than 
 might first be estimated. Plums lose their bloom 
 to a great extent, even on the tree — by brushing 
 of leaves or chafing together. Wherever foliage 
 or other fruit touches it, the bloom is injured or 
 destroyed beyond repair. It is of course impossible 
 to get the plum to market without rubbing off the 
 greater part of the bloom and giving the fruit a 
 mussy appearance. In making the photographs 
 in these books, in fact, it has been found difficult, 
 first to find the fruit which has a perfect bloom on 
 the tree; and second, to get the plum in front of 
 the camera without defacing it. 
 
 [250] 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Wherever a finger touches the plum a mark is 
 left, and since fruits, at best, must receive much 
 handling from the orchard to the ultimate con- 
 sumer, the plum is likely to lose its charm long 
 before its real freshness or flavor has begun to 
 depreciate. 
 
 With the plumcots, however, the velvety bloom 
 remains through growing, picking, sorting, ship- 
 ping, handling and sale. Which means, of course, 
 that the grower, the shipper, and the dealer receive 
 a better profit, and the consumer pays the extra 
 cost with cheerfulness, because appearance, after 
 all, is nearly as valuable a point in a fruit as size, 
 flavor or sweetness. 
 
 This one, unplanned, unexpected improvement 
 in the plumcot increases the earning capacity of 
 the fruit by more than $100.00 per acre over what 
 could be earned if plumcots had an evanescent 
 bloom like their parent plums. 
 
 Which is simply another evidence of the 
 importance, in plant improvement (and else- 
 where) of things which, at first, we are too apt to 
 regard as trifles. 
 
 It is the seeming trifles, after all, which appear 
 to have the greatest effect on prices and profits. 
 Of the two tins of asparagus shown here, one 
 commands more than twice the retail price of the 
 other, and brings considerably more than double 
 
 [252] 
 
Both Good Asparagus 
 
 This direct color photograph print shows the advantage 
 of selecting asparagus for durability as well as for size and 
 flavor. One tin shows stalks which are whole and tempting — the 
 other stalks which, during the process of cooking and can- 
 ning, have broken and become messy. The unbroken 
 asparagus costs no more to raise but com- 
 mands twice as great a market price. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 the profit to the asparagus grower, simply because 
 of the trifle that the more costly asparagus stands 
 up through all the operations from the garden 
 to the table, while the other, broken down in 
 structure, presents a messy, unappetizing appear- 
 ance when served. 
 
 Since it costs no more to raise the higher priced 
 asparagus, after the expense of a few seasons of 
 selection has been paid for, what excuse can there 
 be for producing the other kind? 
 
 It would be impossible, here, to begin to 
 catalog the improvements which can be wrought — 
 improvements in the size, shape, color, texture, 
 juiciness, flavor, sweetness, or chemical content 
 of fruits; improvements in the appearance, ten- 
 derness, taste, cooking qualities, and nutritive 
 elements in vegetables; improvements in length 
 and strength of fiber in cotton, flax and hemp; 
 improvements in size, flavor, solidity, thinness of 
 shell of nuts; improvements in the quantity and 
 the quality of kernels in grains; improvements in 
 amount and in value of the chemical content of 
 sugar beets, sorghum, coffee, tea and all other 
 plants which are raised for their extracts; im- 
 provements, wonderful improvements, in the stalk 
 of corn, even, so that though we could make it 
 bear no more kernels, or no more ears, it would 
 still yield us a better and bigger forage crop; 
 
 [254] 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 improvements, all of them, which are capable of 
 turning losses into profits, and of multiplying 
 profits, instead of merely adding to them by single 
 per cents. 
 
 * * it * * 
 
 Improving the yield and, consequently, the 
 usefulness and profit of existing plants, however, 
 is but the beginning of the work before us. 
 
 An almost equally rich field lies in saving 
 plants from their own extravagance, thereby 
 increasing the 3d eld. 
 
 The fruit trees of our fathers and mothers were 
 shade trees in size, with all too little fruit. 
 
 The ideal orchard of today, generally speaking, 
 is the one which can be picked without the use of 
 a step ladder. Thus, already, we have taught fruit 
 bearing plants economy — saved them the extrava- 
 gance of making unnecessary wood, at the expense 
 of fruit, since it is their fruit, not their wood, that 
 we want. 
 
 The grapes of our childhood grew sparsely on 
 climbing vines which covered our arbors; while 
 the grapes grown for profit today grow thickly, 
 almost solidly, on stubby plants three feet or so 
 in height. The value of the grape plant lies in 
 the fruit and not in the vine. 
 
 In so many different ways can we save our 
 plants extravagance and increase their useful 
 
 [255] 
 
Transforming the Gladiolus 
 
 When Mr. Burbank first began his work with the gladiolus, 
 its blossoms were widely separated on a long stalk. The direct 
 color photograph print above shows how he has brought them into a 
 compact mass, and how, in many cases, he has trained them 
 to bloom around the entire stalk instead of only on two 
 sides as before. Mr. Burbank also increased the 
 size and strength of the gladiolus stalk that 
 it might better withstand the winds — 
 all of these things in addition 
 to the wonderful improve- 
 ments he has wrought 
 in the flower itself. 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 products by curbing their useless ones, that it 
 would not be possible to list them here. 
 
 But, aside from these, and in the same category, 
 there are countless other new improvements to 
 be wrought. 
 
 The stoneless plum points the way to a new 
 world of fruits in which the stony or shell-like 
 covering of the seeds has been bred away. 
 
 The coreless apple, pear and quince, with 
 sheathless seeds growing compactly near the top, 
 out of the way — these are all within the range of 
 accomplishment. 
 
 Seedless raspberries, blackberries, gooseber- 
 ries, currants, with the energy saved reinvested 
 in added size or better flavor, call for some one 
 to bring them about. Seedless grapes we have had 
 for more than a century; yet by a certain cross 
 which Mr. Burbank will suggest in the grape 
 chapter, he believes that they can be doubled in 
 size and much improved in flavor. Seedless figs, 
 even, might be made, but these could be counted 
 no improvement; for the seeds of the fig give the 
 fruit its flavor. 
 
 Seedless watermelons might mean more work 
 than the result would repay, but navel water- 
 melons, with seeds arranged as in the navel orange, 
 would, likely enough, yield a result commensurate 
 with the effort required to produce them. 
 
 [257] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Thornless blackberries and spineless cactus are 
 productions of proven worth and long standing, 
 which Mr. Burbank has now followed up with his 
 thornless raspberry — with many other thornless 
 plants to come. Why thorns at all, in the world 
 of useful plants, when useful plants no longer 
 need them? 
 
 Whatever plant we observe we shall see some 
 waste which might be eliminated, some weakness 
 which might be overcome, some extravagance 
 which might be checked — and all for the profit 
 
 of producer and consumer alike. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Still another important department of plant 
 improvement lies in fitting plants to meet specific 
 conditions. 
 
 The grape growers of California, for example, 
 had their vineyards destroyed by a little plant 
 louse called the phylloxera, a pest which not only 
 attacks the leaves, but the roots as well, and kills 
 the vine. The growers found relief through 
 grafting new vines on resistant roots which en- 
 vironment had armored against this pest. 
 
 When we think of the cactus, and the sage- 
 brush, and the desert euphorbia — of the conditions 
 which, unaided, they have withstood and the 
 enemies which they have overcome, does it not 
 seem as if, with our help, we should be able to 
 
 [258] 
 
A New Thornless Fruit 
 
 Mr. Burbank's thornless blackberry is well known, and 
 
 now, by the application of the same methods, he has produced 
 
 his first thornless raspberry. Plants which are under cultivation no 
 
 longer have need for thorns and it is possible to save them 
 
 the extravagance of producing them so that they may 
 
 have more energy to put into their useful product. 
 
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ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 produce new races of plants to withstand the boll 
 weevil, the codling moth and the San Jose scale; 
 and with complaints so broadcast, and successes 
 so marked and so many, does not the perfection 
 of disease- and pest-resisting varieties seem an 
 important and lucrative field? 
 
 Nor are the insects and diseases the only 
 enemies which plants can be taught to overcome. 
 Mr. Burbank has trained trees to bloom later in 
 the season so as to avoid the late frosts which 
 might nip the buds; and to bear earlier, that their 
 fruit may be gathered before the early frosts of 
 fall have come to destroy. He has encouraged 
 the gladiolus to thicken its stalk and to rearrange 
 its blossoms, so that the wind no longer ruins its 
 beauty. 
 
 And the prune, which must lie on the ground 
 till it cures, had the habit, here in California, of 
 ripening at about the time of the equinoctial rains 
 of fall. Mr. Burbank helped it to shift its bearing 
 season earlier so that, now, when the rains come, 
 the prune crop has been harvested and is safely 
 under cover. 
 
 In all of these enemies of plant life, the insects, 
 and the diseases, and the rains, and the frosts, 
 and the snows, and even the parching heat of 
 the plains, there are opportunities for the plant 
 improver. 
 
 [261] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Yet these enemies form the least important, 
 perhaps, of the special conditions to which plants 
 may be accommodated. 
 
 The market demand, for example, is a specific 
 condition which well repays any effort expended 
 in transforming plants to meet it. 
 
 The early cherries, and the early asparagus, 
 and the early corn — and every fruit and food 
 which can be offered before the heavy season 
 opens, is rewarded with a fancy price which 
 means a fancy profit to its producer. 
 
 The early bearers, too, may be supplanted 
 with those still earlier, until the extra early ones 
 overlap the extra late ones. Mr. Burbank now 
 has strawberries, which, in climates where there 
 is no frost severe enough to prevent, bear the 
 year around. 
 
 Mr. Burbank's winter rhubarb, another year- 
 around bearer, as well as his plumcot with its 
 indestructible bloom, are improvements which 
 show what can be done in the way of meeting 
 market demand. 
 
 His cherries, which have retailed at $3.10 a 
 pound because of their lusciousness and their 
 earliness, give an idea of the profit of changing 
 the bearing periods of our plants as against taking 
 their output as it comes. 
 
 Beside the market demand for fresh fruits 
 
 [262] 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 and vegetables ahead of time, there is an almost 
 equally great demand, later on in the season, from 
 the canners. 
 
 The illustration of the asparagus which stands 
 canning as against equally good asparagus which 
 does not, typifies the needs of this demand. The 
 same truth applies to tree fruits and berries 
 and vegetables — to everything that undergoes the 
 preserving process. 
 
 Some plants are more profitable when their 
 bearing season is lengthened as much as possible; 
 some, as has been seen, when it is made earlier 
 or later; but Mr. Burbank faced a different con- 
 dition when he produced his Empson pea. 
 
 The canners wanted a very small green pea 
 to imitate the French one which is so much used. 
 Quite a little problem in chemistry was involved. 
 Peas half grown are two-thirds sweeter than peas 
 full grown, because, toward the end, their sugar 
 begins to go a step further and turn into starch. 
 With these demands in mind, Mr. Burbank planted 
 and selected, and planted and selected until he 
 had the qualities he wanted in a pea of the right 
 size when it was half ripe. 
 
 But still another element entered — peas for 
 canning should ripen all at one time and not 
 straggle out over a week or two. The reason 
 for this being that, if they ripen all at once, they 
 
 [263] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 may be harvested by machinery so that the cost of 
 handling is cut to the minimum. 
 
 Mr. Burbank took the peas which he had 
 selected for form, size, color, taste, content, and 
 productiveness; then picked them over and, out 
 of tens of thousands, got perhaps one or two 
 hundred peas which he planted separately. These, 
 then, he harvested by separately counting the 
 pods and counting the peas, until he had finally 
 combined in his selection not only the best of 
 the lot but those which ripened at the same time — 
 practically on the same day. Today those Burbank 
 Empson peas form the chief industry of a large 
 community. 
 
 There are countless other requirements which 
 can be equally well met — countless little econ- 
 omies which can be taught to the plants — little, 
 as applied to any specific plant, but tremendous 
 in the aggregate. 
 
 There is, for instance, Mr. Burbank's new 
 canning cherry which, when picked, leaves its 
 stone on the tree. It would seem a small thing to 
 one eating the cherries as he picks them off the 
 tree. Yet, think of the saving, as carload after 
 carload of these are brought to the cannery — the 
 saving at a time when minutes count, when help 
 is short, generally, and when the fruit, because 
 of heat, is in danger of spoiling — under these 
 
 [264] 
 
Leaves the Stone on the Tree 
 
 This direct color photograph print shows one of Mr. 
 
 Burbank's new productions, a canning cherry which, when 
 
 picked, leaves the pit on the tree. The saving in not having to pit 
 
 the cherries at the canning factory although, at first apparently 
 
 trifling, is, in the aggregate, larger than would be supposed; 
 
 particularly in view of the fact that the canning 
 
 seasons are so short that much fruit spoils 
 
 through handling and through the delay 
 
 which handling necessitates. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 conditions think of the saving in not having to 
 pit them. 
 
 The list could be extended almost endlessly, 
 from thickening the skin of the plum so as to 
 enable it to be shipped to South Africa and back, 
 as Mr. Burbank has done, to the production of a 
 tomato, which, when placed in boiling water, will 
 shed its skin without peeling — which Mr. Burbank 
 says can be done. 
 
 Under the head of saving a plant from its own 
 extravagance might well come the large subject 
 of bringing trees to early fruiting, or of short- 
 ening the period from seed to maturity in shade 
 and lumber trees. Mr. Burbank's quick growing 
 walnut, and his pineapple quince and chestnut 
 seedlings bearing crops at six months, stand forth 
 as strong encouragement to those who would take 
 up this line. 
 
 Then, too, under the same heading of fitting 
 plants to meet new conditions, whole chapters 
 might be written on how the fig tree could be 
 adapted to New England; or how Minnesota might 
 be made one of the greatest fruit producing states, 
 or how almost any plant might, in time, be adapted 
 to any soil or any climate. 
 
 And, conversely, there is the broad subject of 
 adapting plants to special localities. The hop crop 
 of Sonoma County, California, the cabbage crop 
 
 [266] 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 near Racine, Wisconsin, the celery crop near 
 Kalamazoo, the canteloupe crop at Rocky Ford — 
 all of these bear eloquent testimony to the profit 
 of a specialty properly introduced. 
 
 Who can say how many who are making only 
 a hand-to-mouth living out of corn or wheat, sim- 
 ply because they are in corn or wheat countries, 
 could not fit some special plant to their worn out 
 soil? 
 
 And who, seeing that some forms of plant life 
 not only exist, but thrive, under the most adverse 
 conditions, shall say that there is any poor land, 
 anywhere? Is it not the fact that poor land usually 
 means that the plants have been poorly chosen 
 for it, or poorly adapted to it? 
 
 These are all problems which will be treated 
 in their proper places, problems which offer rich 
 rewards to plant improvers of determination and 
 
 patience. 
 
 ***** 
 
 So far, in these opportunities for plant im- 
 provement, we have referred only to the better- 
 ment of plants now under cultivation. 
 
 When we remember that every useful plant 
 which now grows to serve us was once a wild 
 plant, and when we begin to check over the list 
 of those wild plants which have not yet been 
 improved, the possibilities are almost staggering. 
 
 [267] 
 
A Wild Plant Improved 
 
 This direct color photograph print shows the '™ ld £ e ™ . 
 England aster and the improvement which a s mg | "£™ came 
 selection by Mr. Burbank worked. All of our cultivated plana came 
 from the wild, but the possibility of imp rov ng ™l dp ™£[ 
 far from being exhausted, has, in fact, only been toucnea. 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 Not all plants, of course, are worth working 
 with — not all have within them heredities which 
 could profitably be brought forth. But as a safe 
 comparison, it might be stated that the propor- 
 tion between present useful plants and those in 
 the wild which can be made useful, is at least 
 as great or greater than the proportion between 
 the coal which has already been mined, and the 
 coal which is stored up for us in the ground. 
 Greater, by probably a hundred times, for while 
 we have depleted our coal supply, our plants have 
 been multiplying, not only in number, but in kind 
 and in form. 
 
 Moreover, from our wild plants, we may not 
 only get new products, but new strength, new 
 hardiness, new combative powers, and endless 
 other desirable new qualities for our tame plants. 
 
 All of these things are just as immediate as 
 possibilities, as transcontinental railroads were 
 fifty years ago. All of these things can be made to 
 come about with such apparent ease that future 
 generations will take them as a matter of course. 
 
 Yet we have not touched, so far, on the most 
 interesting field in plant improvement — the 
 production, through crossing, hybridizing and 
 selection, of entirely new plants to meet entirely 
 new demands. 
 
 Who shall produce some plant — and there are 
 
 [269] 
 
Improving the Sunflower 
 
 Even the common sunflower has possibilities for improve- 
 ment as a useful plant. Sunflower seed is greatly prized by 
 poultry raisers for feed. But the improvements which Mr. Burbank 
 is working, along different lines which will be described later, 
 may transform this into one of the most useful of plants. 
 
ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 plenty of suggestions toward this end — which shall 
 utilize cheap land to give the world its supply of 
 wood pulp for paper making, the demand for 
 which has already eaten up our forests and is fast 
 encroaching on Canada's? 
 
 Who shall say that within twenty years there 
 will not be some new plant better than flax, some 
 plant which, unlike flax for this purpose, can be 
 grown in the United States, to supply us with a 
 fabric as cheap as cotton, but as fine as linen? 
 
 Who will be the one to produce a plant which 
 shall yield us rubber — a plant growing, perhaps, 
 on the deserts, which shall make the cost of 
 motor car tires seem only an insignificant item in 
 upkeep? 
 
 And who, on those same deserts, and growing, 
 perhaps, side by side, shall perfect a plant which 
 can be transformed into five cent alcohol for the 
 motors themselves? 
 
 ***** 
 
 We see that the openings for plant improve- 
 ment broadly divide themselves into four classes. 
 
 First, improving the quality of the product of 
 existing plants. 
 
 Second, saving plants from their own extrava- 
 gance, thereby increasing their yield. 
 
 Third, fitting plants more closely to specific 
 conditions of soil, climate and locality. 
 
 [271] 
 

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ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
 
 And fourth, transforming wild plants and 
 making entirely new ones to take care of new 
 wants which are growing with surprising rapidity. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The cost and quality of everything that we eat 
 and wear depend on this work of plant improve- 
 ment. 
 
 The beefsteak for which we are paying an 
 ever-increasing price represents, after all, so 
 many blades of grass or, perhaps, so many slabs of 
 cactus; while the potatoes, the lettuce and the 
 coffee which go with it come out of the ground 
 direct. 
 
 Our shirts are from cotton or flax, or from the 
 mulberry tree on which the silkworm feeds. 
 
 Our shoes, like our steaks, resolve themselves 
 into grass; while our woolen coats represent the 
 grass which the sheep found after the cows got 
 through. 
 
 The mineral kingdom supplies the least of our 
 needs; and the animal kingdom feeds on, and 
 
 depends on, the vegetable kingdom, after all. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Who can predict the result," asks Mr. Bur- 
 bank, "when the inventive genius of young 
 America is turned toward this, the greatest of all 
 fields of invention, as it is now turned toward 
 mechanics and electricity?" 
 
 [273] 
 
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 <n a * a. o a, 
 
Piecing the Fragments 
 
 of A 
 Motion Picture Film 
 
 We Stop to Take 
 A Backward Glance 
 
 WHEN you speak of environment as an 
 active influence," Mr. Burbank was 
 asked, "do you mean the soil and the 
 rainfall and the climate?" 
 
 "Yes," was the reply. "I mean those; but 
 not only those; I mean, too, such elements of 
 
 environment as the Union Pacific Railroad. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "I will explain," Mr. Burbank continued. 
 
 "Go out into the woods, almost anywhere in 
 the United States, and hunt up a wild plum tree, 
 and you will find that it bears a poor little fruit 
 with a great big stone. 
 
 "You see, the only purpose which the wild plum 
 has in surrounding its seed with a fruit is to 
 attract the animals so that they may carry it away 
 from the foot of the parent tree and plant it in 
 
 [Volume I — Chapter IX] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 new surroundings, for the good of the offspring 
 and the race. It takes very little meat, and very 
 little in the way of attractive appearance to 
 accomplish this purpose; and besides, the wild 
 plum has to put so much of its vitality into stone, 
 in order to protect the seed within it from the 
 sharp teeth of the same animals which carry it 
 away, that it has little energy left to devote to 
 beauty and flavor. 
 
 "Then take the same wild plum after it has 
 been brought under cultivation and as it grows 
 in the average backyard, and you will find a 
 transformation — less stone, more meat, better 
 flavor, finer aroma, more regular shape, brighter 
 color. 
 
 "This, however, represents but the first stage 
 in the progress of the plum; with all this 
 improvement the backyard plum still may not 
 be useful for any commercial purpose; because 
 people with plum trees in their backyards are 
 likely to eat the fruit off the tree, or to give it 
 to their neighbors, or to cook and preserve it as 
 soon as ripe. So, even the cultivated backyard 
 plum may be perfectly satisfactory for its purpose 
 without having those keeping qualities necessary 
 in a commercial fruit. 
 
 "And this is the point at which the Union 
 Pacific Railroad entered into its environment — at 
 
 [276] 
 
A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 least into the environment of the California plum. 
 
 "The railroad became a factor in plum im- 
 provement by bringing millions of plum-hungry 
 easterners within reach — by affording quick and 
 economical shipping facilities where there had 
 been no shipping facilities at all before. 
 
 "Much as the time of transcontinental travel was 
 reduced, the backyard plum could not withstand 
 the journey. But with an eager market as an 
 incentive, made possible through the railroad, 
 people began to select plums for shipment, until 
 the plum graduated from its backyard environ- 
 ment and became the basis of a thriving industry. 
 The railroad, by bringing customers within reach 
 of those who had plums which would stand 
 shipment, and charging as much to ship poor 
 plums as good plums, encouraged selection not 
 only for shipping plums, but toward a better and 
 better quality of fruit which, without doubt, in 
 the absence of the market which the railroad 
 provided, would never have been produced. 
 
 "Thus we see three important stages in the 
 transformation of the plum. 
 
 "First, the wild era. 
 
 "Second, the backyard era. 
 
 "Third, the railroad era." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 When we stop to think of it, all of the great 
 
 [277] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 improvements in plant life have been wrought in 
 the railroad era — using the railroad, figuratively, 
 to represent all of the invention, wealth and 
 progress which have accompanied it. 
 
 There are, after all, but one hundred and forty 
 generations between us and Adam, if the popular 
 notions of elapsed time are correct — but one 
 hundred and forty father-to-son steps between 
 the Garden of Eden and now — but one hundred 
 and forty lifetimes, all told, in which whatever 
 progress we have made has been accomplished. 
 
 Yet our plants go back, who knows how many 
 tens of thousands of generations? 
 
 It took the plum tree all of these uncounted 
 ages, in which it had only wild environment, to 
 produce the poor little fruit which we find growing 
 in the woods. 
 
 It took only two or three short centuries of 
 care and half-hearted selection to bring about the 
 improvement which is evidenced in the common 
 backyard plum. 
 
 And it took less than a generation, after the 
 railroads came, to work all of the real wonders 
 which we see in this fruit today. 
 
 The last two generations of the human race, 
 in fact, have accomplished more toward real 
 progress — have done more to make transportation 
 and quick communication possible — have gone 
 
 [278] 
 
A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 further in invention, art, science, and general 
 knowledge — than the one hundred and thirty-eight 
 generations, which preceded them, combined. 
 
 So, up to two or three human generations ago, 
 the plants, with their start of tens of thousands 
 of generations, were abreast of or ahead of human 
 needs. 
 
 But human inventive genius, going ahead 
 hundreds or thousands of years at a jump, 
 bringing with it organization and specialization, 
 has changed all of that. 
 
 In our race across the untracked plains before 
 us, we have outrun our plants. That is all. And, 
 having outrun them, we must lend a hand to 
 bring them up with us if they are to meet our 
 
 requirements. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Shall we content ourselves with watering our 
 plants when they are dry; and enriching the soil 
 when it is worn out; shall we be satisfied merely 
 to be good gardeners? 
 
 Or shall we study the living forces within the 
 plants themselves and let them teach us how to 
 work real transformations? 
 
 ***** 
 
 It is conceivable that a manufacturer of 
 machinery might become successful, or even rise 
 to be the foremost manufacturer in his line, 
 
 [279] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 without giving a moment of consideration to the 
 atom-structure of the iron which he works — with 
 never a thought of the forces which Nature has 
 employed in creating the substance we call iron 
 ore. 
 
 It is conceivable that one might become a good 
 cook — a master chef, even — without the slightest 
 reference to, or knowledge of, the structural 
 formation of animal cells and vegetable cells. 
 
 Or that one might succeed as a teacher of 
 the young — might become, even, a nation-wide 
 authority on molding the plastic mind of youth — 
 without ever being assailed by the thought that 
 the forbears of the nimble-minded children in his 
 care, ages and ages ago, may have been swinging 
 from tree to tree by their tails. 
 
 And so, in most occupations, it has been 
 contrived for us that we deal only with present- 
 day facts and conditions — that there is little 
 incentive, aside from general interest or wandering 
 curiosity, to try to lift the veil which obscures our 
 past — or to peer through the fog which keeps us 
 from seeing what tomorrow has in store. 
 
 In plant growing, more than in any of the 
 world's other industries, does the scheme of 
 evolution and a working knowledge of Nature's 
 methods cease to be a theory — of far-away 
 importance and of no immediate interest — and 
 
 [280] 
 
Snow-on-the-Mountain 
 
 This odd plant is shown here to illustrate the necessity 
 of studying not merely the form of a plant but the forces 
 within it It receives its name because when it blooms its leaves 
 begin to turn white. The purpose of this, Mr. Burbank says, is to 
 help guide the insects to the blossom in order to insure reproduction. 
 It will be noted that the leaves which do not lead to blossoms remain 
 green while those which surround the blossoms form brilliantly 
 illumined pathways for the insects. Few plants give outward evi- 
 dences of their processes so clearly as this — but the forces 
 of heredity and environment are there — none the less 
 —and it is these forces which we must study 
 if ive are to help plants to improvement. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 become an actual working factor, a necessary 
 tool, without which it is impossible to do the 
 day's work. 
 
 Whether plant improvement be taken up as a 
 science, or as a profession, or as a busines$ — or 
 whether it be considered merely a thing of general 
 interest, an idle hour recreation — there is ever 
 present the need to understand Nature's methods 
 and her forces in order to be able to make use of 
 them — to guide them — there always stares us in 
 the face that solitary' question: 
 
 "Where— and how— did life start?" 
 ***** 
 
 We have seen in this volume a color photograph 
 of corn as it grew four thousand years, perhaps, 
 before the days of Adam and Eve. 
 
 It took less than eight seasons to carry this 
 plant backward those ten thousand years. 
 
 How this plant was first taken back to the 
 stage in which it was found by the American 
 Indians, thus revealing the methods which they 
 crudely used to improve it — and how it was taken 
 back and back and back beyond the Pharaohs and 
 then back forty centuries before the time of man — 
 how we know these things to be true — and how, as 
 a result of these experiments we are about to 
 see it carried forward by several centuries — all of 
 these things are reserved for a later chapter where 
 
 [282] 
 
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 3 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 space will permit the treatment which the subject 
 deserves. 
 
 The illustration is cited here merely as one of 
 thousands, typical of plant improvement, in which, 
 in order to work forward a little, we must work 
 backward ages and ages. 
 
 It is cited here to show that what is merely an 
 interesting theory to the mass of the world's 
 workers, becomes a definite, practical, working 
 necessity to the man or woman who becomes 
 interested in plant improvement. 
 
 It is cited here so that we may be helped to get 
 a clearer mind picture of Mr. Burbank's viewpoint 
 — of that viewpoint which, after all, has enabled 
 him to become a leader in a new line, the founder 
 of a new art — instead of remaining a nurseryman 
 
 or gardener. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "In my viewpoint," says Mr. Burbank, "there 
 is little that is new — little that has not been 
 discovered by others — little that has not been 
 accepted by scientists generally — little that re- 
 quires explanation to those who simply see the 
 same things that I have seen. 
 
 "I have no new theory of evolution to offer — 
 perhaps only a few details to add to the theories 
 which have already been worked out by men of 
 science. 
 
 [284] 
 
A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 "And I make these observations and conclusions 
 of mine a part of this work for two reasons : 
 
 "First, because they are products not of 
 imagination, reasoning, or any mental process — 
 but the practical observations and conclusions 
 which have gained force and proof, year by 
 year, in a lifetime of experience with plants — 
 throughout forty years of continuous devotion to 
 the subject, during which time I have tried more 
 than one hundred thousand separate experiments 
 on plant life; and, as such, represent an important 
 phase of my work. 
 
 "Second, because an ever-present interest in 
 evolution — an ever-eager mind to peer backward 
 and forward — is essential not only to the practice 
 of plant improvement, but even to the barest 
 
 understanding of it." 
 
 ***** 
 
 To gain the first quick glimpse, let us liken the 
 process of evolution to a moving picture as it is 
 thrown on the screen. 
 
 Imagine for example that some all-seeing 
 camera had made a snapshot of Nature's progress 
 each hundred years from the time when plant life 
 started in our world to the present day. 
 
 Imagine that these progressive snapshots were 
 joined together in a motion picture reel, and 
 thrown in quick succession upon a screen. 
 
 [285] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 We should see, no doubt, as the picture began 
 to move, a tiny living being, a simple cell, the 
 chemical product, perhaps, of salty water — so 
 small that 900 of them would have to be assembled 
 together to make a speck big enough for our 
 human eyes to see. 
 
 As snapshot succeeded snapshot we should 
 see that two of these microscopic simple cells 
 in some way or other formed a partnership — 
 possibly finding it easier to fight the elements of 
 destruction in alliance than alone. 
 
 We should see, beyond doubt, that these 
 partnerships joined other partnerships, and as 
 partnership joined partnership, and group joined 
 group, these amalgamations began to have an 
 object beyond mere defense — that they began to 
 organize for their own improvement, comfort, well 
 being, or whatever was their guiding object. 
 
 We should see that, whereas each simple cell 
 had within it all of the powers necessary to move 
 about and live its life in its own crude way, yet 
 with the amalgamation of the cells there came 
 organization, development, improvement. 
 
 Some of the cells in each amalgamation, let us 
 say, specialized on seeing, some on locomotion, 
 some on digestion. 
 
 Thus, while each simple cell had all of these 
 powers in a limited way, yet the new creature, 
 
 [286] 
 
A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 as a result of specialization, could see better, move 
 more readily, digest more easily, than the separate 
 elements which went into it. 
 
 And so, through the early pictures of our reel, 
 there would be spread before us the development 
 of the little simple cell into more and more 
 complex forms of life — first vegetable, then animal 
 — into everything, finally, that lives and grows 
 
 about us today — into us, ourselves. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 In an actual motion picture as it is thrown 
 on the screen, it is only the quick progressive 
 succession of the pictures that makes us realize 
 the sense of motion. 
 
 If we were to detach and examine a single film 
 from the reel, it would show no movement. It 
 would be as stationary and as fixed as a child's 
 first kodak snapshot. 
 
 In the motion picture of Nature's evolution, 
 the world, as we see it about us in our lifetime, 
 represents but a single snapshot, detached from 
 those which have preceded it and from those 
 which are to succeed it. 
 
 And so, some of us — too many of us — not 
 confronted with the same necessity which irre- 
 sistibly leads the plant student into the study of 
 these forces — viewing only the single, apparently 
 unmoving picture before us, have concluded that 
 
 [287] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 there is no forward motion — that there has been 
 no evolution — that there will be none. 
 
 The plant student, above all others, has the 
 greatest facilities at his hand for observing not 
 only the details of the picture which is now on the 
 screen — but for gaining glimpses — fragmentary 
 glimpses — of pictures which have preceded — of 
 piecing these together — and of realizing that all 
 that we have and are and will be must be a part 
 of this slow, sure, forward-moving change that 
 unfailingly traces itself back to the little simple 
 salt-water cell. 
 
 As we go further and further into the work 
 we shall begin to see the film fragments which to 
 workers in other lines are obscured, unnoticed, 
 unknown. 
 
 We shall be able to observe details of the 
 process — carried home to us with undeniable 
 conviction — indisputable to any man who believes 
 what he actually sees — which will give us a 
 realistic view of the whole motion picture which 
 to the world at large has always been denied. 
 
 We shall find that, dealing, thus, with Nature's 
 forces at first hand, our work will inspire an 
 interest beyond even the interest of creating new 
 forms of life. 
 
 And, as our work unfolds, the side lights which 
 we shall see will clear up many or most of the 
 
 [288] 
 
A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 doubts which are likely to take possession of us 
 
 at the outset. 
 
 ***** 
 
 It may be well, at this point, however, to 
 take space to refer to the single question most 
 frequently asked by thousands of intelligent men 
 and women who have visited Mr. Burbank's 
 experiment farms. 
 
 This question, differing in form, as the indi- 
 vidualities of the questioners differ, usually runs 
 like this: 
 
 "If we are descendants of monkeys, why are 
 not the monkeys turning into men today?" 
 ***** 
 
 Let us learn Mr. Burbank's answer to this 
 question by turning to the golden-yellow California 
 poppy, so called, and the three entirely new 
 poppies (illustrated here in natural colors), which 
 he produced from it. 
 
 In order to make clear the truth which the 
 poppies prove, it is necessary to explain the 
 successive steps of the operation. 
 
 Mr. Burbank first grew a yardful of the wild, 
 golden-yellow poppies, such as cover California's 
 hills. 
 
 The individual poppies of this yardful — a 
 million of them, at a guess — resembled each other 
 as closely as one rose resembles another rose on 
 
 [289] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 the same bush, or as one grape resembles another 
 on the same bunch, as one pea resembles another 
 in the same pod. 
 
 Yet among those million poppies — all looking 
 alike to the unpracticed eye — there could be found 
 by a close observer as many individual differences 
 as could be found among any million human 
 beings in the world. 
 
 Among those million poppies, each with its 
 distinct individuality, Mr. Burbank found three 
 which had a decided tendency to break away from 
 the California poppy family and start a separate 
 race of their own. 
 
 This same tendency could be observed among 
 a million men, a million roses, a million peas, a 
 million quartz crystals, or a million of any of 
 Nature's creations. 
 
 Those one, or two, or three out of every million 
 with tendencies to break away are sometimes 
 called the freaks or "sports" of the species. 
 
 It seems as though Nature, never quite satisfied 
 with her creations, is always experimenting, with 
 the hope of creating a better result — yet limiting 
 those experiments to such a small percentage that 
 the mass of the race remains unchanged — its 
 characteristics preserved — its general tendencies 
 unaffected. 
 
 The California poppy, as it grows wild, is a rich 
 
 [290] 
 
California Poppy 
 
 This direct color photograph print shows the wild 
 
 California poppy, so called, golden-yellow, as it grows in one 
 
 of Mr. Burbank's cactus patches. This common wild flower covers 
 
 California's hills at certain seasons and from it the State is 
 
 supposed to have received its name, "The Land of Fire." 
 
The Golden Poppy Turned Crimson 
 
 The first transformation which Mr. Burbank wrought in the 
 
 California poppy us explained in the text matter was to turn it to 
 
 crimson. The success of this experiment can be judged 
 
 from the color photograph print shown here. 
 
The California Poppy Turned White 
 
 The next experiment which Mr. Burbank tried was to 
 
 eliminate the yellow of the wild poppy and produce, instead, 
 
 a white flower. The tips of the petals of this poppy are now pure 
 
 white, while the centers remain a very light cream-yellow, the 
 
 only suggestion of the bright golden yellow of its ancestors. 
 
\ 
 
 The Poppy Turned Fire-Flame 
 
 In his poppy variations Mr. Burbank found some 
 
 hnfhM%' ln , ste ? d °f Ending the inherited characteristics showed 
 
 both distinctly in the same flower— lemon yellow edges with golden 
 
 yellow centers. These, perhaps the most beautiful result of his 
 
 experiment, he christened "The Fire-Flame Poppy." 
 
A BACKWARD GLANCE 
 
 golden-yellow. In spite of individual differences, 
 this color is the characteristic of the kind. It is a 
 fixed characteristic, dating back at least to the 
 time when California, because of the poppy 
 covered hills, received its name — the land of fire — 
 from the early Spanish navigators that ventured 
 up and down the coast. 
 
 Out of the billion billions of wild poppies that 
 have grown, each million has no doubt contained 
 its freaks or its "sports" — its few experimental 
 individuals which Nature has given the tendency 
 to break away from the characteristics of their 
 fellows. 
 
 Yet in the history of the California poppy 
 family, as far back as we can trace, none of these 
 freaks or "sports" had ever achieved its object. 
 
 Among the "sports" which Mr. Burbank found 
 in the million poppies he grew were one with a 
 crimson tendency, one with a white tendency, and 
 one with a lemon-yellow, fiery-red tendency. 
 
 If Mr. Burbank had not intervened, these 
 freaks, quite likely, would have perished without 
 offspring. 
 
 But by nurturing them, separating them and 
 saving their seeds, within a few brief seasons he 
 was able to produce three new kinds of the 
 California poppy. 
 
 Each kind had all of the parent poppy charac- 
 
 [295] 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 teristics but one. They were California poppies 
 in habits, in growth, in shape, in size, in form, in 
 grace, in texture, in beauty. 
 
 Yet in color they differed from the California 
 mid poppy almost as a violet differs from a daisy. 
 
 One of these freaks developed into the solid 
 crimson poppy, another into the pure white poppy, 
 and still another into the fire-flame poppy — all 
 shown here. 
 
 The details of method employed and the 
 application of these methods and the underlying 
 principles to the improvement of other flowers, 
 fruits, trees and useful and ornamental plants, will 
 be left for later chapters. But as an illustration, 
 this poppy experiment brings home three things : 
 
 First, that Nature creates no duplicates. 
 
 Second, that although each of Nature's crea- 
 tions has its own distinctive individuality, all the 
 time she takes special precautions to fix, preserve, 
 and make permanent the characteristics of each 
 of her races or kinds. 
 
 Third, that there is always present in all of 
 her creations the experimental tendency to break 
 away from fixed characteristics — to start new 
 races — to branch out into entirely new forms of 
 development. Through Mr. Burbank's interven- 
 tion, in the case of the poppy, this tendency was 
 crowned with success; in ten thousand years, 
 
 [296] 
 

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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 perhaps, without intervention at all, the same 
 result might have been attained. 
 
 From the fern at the water's edge, to the apple 
 tree which bears us luscious fruit — from the oyster 
 that lies helpless in the bottom of Long Island 
 Sound, to the human being who rakes it up, and 
 eats it — every different form of life about us may, 
 thus, be traced to the experiments which Nature 
 is continually trying, in order to improve her 
 creations. 
 
 As to the question so often asked, monkeys are 
 no more turning into men than golden-yellow 
 poppies are turning into crimson, white or fire- 
 flame poppies. 
 
 In monkeys, as in men and poppies — and quartz 
 crystals — there is ever present the tendency to 
 break away from the kind, yet Nature is always 
 alert to prevent the break — unless it demonstrates 
 itself to be an advance, an improvement — from 
 occurring. 
 
 She gives us, all of us, and everything— 
 individuality, personality — unfailingly, always — at 
 the same time preserving in each the general 
 characteristics of its kind. 
 
 Yet all the time she is creating her freaks 
 and "sports" — all the time she is trying new 
 experiments — most of them doomed to die unpro- 
 ductive — with the hope that the thousand freaks 
 
 [298] 
 
Another Color Variation 
 
 Unlike the five-flame poppy in which the center is of one color and 
 
 the outside edges of another, this poppy, unnamed, has vertical 
 
 divisions on each petal, half crimson and half yellow. This is hut 
 
 one of the countless variations secured in the poppy experiment. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 among a billion creations may show the way 
 toward a single improvement in a race. 
 ***** 
 
 In this hurried backward glance, we have, by 
 no means, gone back to the beginning of things. 
 Even the moving picture of Nature's course from 
 the salt-water cell to us, covering what seems an 
 infinity of time, may be but a single stationary 
 film in a still greater moving picture— and that, 
 too, but a part of a greater whole. 
 
 Indeed, the further we go into our subject, the 
 more we are convinced that instead of having 
 followed the thread of life to its beginning, we 
 have merely been following a raveling which leads 
 into one of its tiny strands. 
 
 The more we learn definitely about the process 
 which we trace back to the simple salt-water cell, 
 the more we are led to inquire into those other 
 forms of energy — into the chemical reactions — 
 into the vibrations which manifest themselves to 
 us as sound, heat, light — into electricity and those 
 manifestations whose discovery is more recent, 
 and whose nature is less well understood. 
 
 The more we observe the phenomena in our 
 own fields of activity, the more we realize the 
 futility of trying, in a single lifetime, to explore 
 Infinity. 
 
 The more content we feel, instead, to learn as 
 
 [300] 
 
A Bouquet of Poppy Variations 
 
 It would be impossible, in a single photograph to show all of 
 the variations which a single season's work brings forth. The bouquet 
 shown here, however, when compared with the original golden- 
 yellow parent, indicates the range of difference secured. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 much as we can that is useful and practical, of 
 the single strand of life's thread which has to do 
 more immediately with the thing in hand. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "What do you put in the soil to make your 
 canna lilies so big?" 
 
 "How often do you take up the bulbs of your 
 gladioli?" 
 
 "How late do you keep your strawberry plants 
 under glass?" 
 
 These, and a hundred others of their kind, are 
 the questions which visitors at the experiment 
 farm are continually asking Mr. Burbank. 
 
 It is not that Mr. Burbank undervalues the care 
 of plants, or does not appreciate the importance 
 of cultivation. 
 
 But his questioners fail to realize that his work 
 has been with the insides of plants and not with 
 their externals. 
 
 Of the details of working method — of the little 
 tricks that save time — of Luther Burbank's bold 
 innovations which many gardeners may have 
 dreamed, but none have ever dared to do — of 
 these, in the volumes to come, we shall find plenty. 
 
 Yet, we shall find ourselves, too, searching the 
 times when things were not as they are, in order 
 to get glimpses of things as they are to be — and all, 
 not from the standpoint of theory, but merely to 
 
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LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 help us in the very practical, useful work of 
 coaxing from Nature new forms of plant life — 
 better forms than, uncoaxed, she would give us — 
 plants which because of their greater productivity 
 will help us lower our constantly increasing cost 
 of living — plants which will yield us entirely 
 new substances to be used in manufactures — 
 plants which will grow on what now are waste 
 lands — plants which, by their better fruit, or their 
 increased beauty, or their doubled yield, or their 
 improved quality, will add to our individual 
 pleasures and profits, and to the pleasures and 
 profits of the whole world. 
 
 [End of Volume I] 
 
 — In order to work forward 
 a little, we must work 
 backward ages and ages. 
 
 <r -* 
 
 
 *V 
 
 
List of 
 
 Direct Color Photograph Prints 
 
 in Volume I 
 
 /YCaCia Page 
 
 The Sensitive Plant and Its Cousin, the Acacia 44 
 
 How the Sensitive Plant Folds Up 45 
 
 Amaryllis 
 
 The Amaryllis and Its Parents 214 
 
 The Amaryllis as Improved 215 
 
 Still Another Amaryllis 216 
 
 Apple 
 
 Graft, One Year Old 201 
 
 Showing Effect of Codling Moth 260 
 
 Asparagus 
 
 Both Good Asparagus 253 
 
 Aster 
 
 Wild New England Aster and Improved 268 
 
 Bee 
 
 A Pollen Laden Bee 79 
 
 Berries 
 
 A Primus Berry 227 
 
 Some Blackberry Cam's 236 
 
 Thornless Raspberry 259 
 
 Burbank, Luther 
 
 Mr. Burbank at Sixty-Four Frontispiece 
 
 Mr. Burbank marking selections 191 
 
 Carnation 
 
 Carnation — pistil unreceptive 73 
 
 Carnation — pistil receptive 74 
 
 Carnation showing egg nest 75 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Continued) 
 
 CactUS Page 
 
 Armored Against Its Enemies 6 
 
 Every Inch Protected 9 
 
 A Relic of Past Ages 13 
 
 The Cactus Still Bears Leaves 16 
 
 As Smooth as Velvet 19 
 
 A Transformation Seen in the Making 22 
 
 After a Year in the Dark 25 
 
 A Typical Cactus Flower 27 
 
 Spineless Cactus in Patch 33 
 
 Cactus Seedlings in "Flat" 186 
 
 Cactus Seedlings Transplanted 188 
 
 Celery 
 
 Wild Celery 134 
 
 Cherry- 
 Five Hundred Kinds on One Tree 209 
 
 A New Canning Cherry 265 
 
 Clover 
 
 Simulating a Poisonous Look 47 
 
 Coconut 
 
 The Coconut's Three Eyes 95 
 
 Corn 
 
 An Experiment in Corn 91 
 
 Our Corn and Its Tiny Parent 127 
 
 Some Other Forms of Corn 129 
 
 Rainhow Corn 283 
 
 Dahlias 
 
 Unblended Heredities 42 
 
 Daisy 
 
 The African Orange Daisy 140 
 
 We Find a White Cousin 149 
 
 The Variations Spread Before Us 151 
 
 A Broadening of the Petals 153 
 
 More Orange in the Center 155 
 
 A Full Orange Center 157 
 
 More Evidence of Broad Petals 159 
 
 A Better Orange Than Its Parent 161 
 
 Variation on the Outside 163 
 
 We Could Make a Purple Daisy 165 
 
 Our First Pink Daisy 167 
 
 A Second Step in Selection 169 
 
 Try, Try Again 171 
 
 At Last the Pink Daisy 173 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Continued) 
 
 Devil's Claw Page 
 
 As It Grows in the Tropics 101 
 
 Shedding Its Husk 103 
 
 Ready for Action 101 
 
 Eucalyptus 
 
 An Ancestral Secret 39 
 
 Geranium 
 
 Some Dooryard Geraniums 66 
 
 The Geranium Ready to Give PolJen 70 
 
 The Geranium Ready to Receive Pollen 71 
 
 Gladiolus 
 
 Transforming the gladiolus 256 
 
 Grafts 
 
 Apple Graft One Year Old 201 
 
 Chestnut Graft One Year Old 203 
 
 Ice Plant 
 
 A Living Refrigerator 49 
 
 Lettuce 
 
 Wild Lettuce 133 
 
 Lily 
 
 Carrion Lily 81 
 
 Chinese Lily 121 
 
 Record of Selection 207 
 
 Monkey-Puzzle Tree 
 
 Armored to the Top 30 
 
 Nasturtium 
 
 A Humming Rird Flower 87 
 
 Orange 
 
 Less Rind, More Meat 123 
 
 Orchid 
 
 The Orchid Awaiting an Insect 84 
 
 The Orchid's Pollen Bundles 85 
 
 Pansy 
 
 A Response to Kindly Care 118 
 
 Pitcher Plant 
 
 This Plant Eats Insects 51 
 
 Plums 
 
 A Typical Burbank Plum 239 
 
 The Plum's Perishable Bloom 249 
 
 A Burbank Plum and Its Wild Ancestor 274 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Continued) 
 
 PluniCOt . page 
 
 Mr. Bin-bank's Plumcot 212 
 
 Showing Indestructible Bloom 251 
 
 Poppy 
 
 Poppy pods — An Effect of Hybridization 224 
 
 California Poppy 291 
 
 The Golden Poppy Turned Crimson 292 
 
 The California Poppy Turned White 293 
 
 The Poppy Turned Fire-Flame 294 
 
 Variations in Size 297 
 
 Another Color Variation 299 
 
 A Bouquet of Poppy Variations 301 
 
 White and Crimson Side by Side 303 
 
 Potato 
 
 Potato Seed Balls 57 
 
 Some Seedling Potatoes 60 
 
 The Burbank Potato 63 
 
 Variable Potato Seedlings 233 
 
 Sensitive Plant 
 
 The Sensitive Plant and Its Cousin 44 
 
 How the Sensitive Plant Folds Up 45 
 
 Snowball 
 
 Tame and Wild 112 
 
 Snow-on-the-Mountain 
 
 An Odd Trait of Heredity 281 
 
 Sunflower 
 
 Improving the Sunflower 270 
 
 A Sunflower Stalk Which Is Square 272 
 
 Tigridia 
 
 Improved Tigridias 230 
 
 Tulips 
 
 Variations in Tulips 196 
 
 View's 
 
 Many Plants in Small Space 176 
 
 A Wide Range of Variation 179 
 
 Quantity Production the Keynote '. 183 
 
 Ten Thousand Dollar Bonfire 204 
 
 Violet 
 
 The Pathos of the Violet 115 
 
 The Violet's Wonderful Advertisement 117 
 
 Walnuts 
 
 Variations in Walnuts 242 
 
 # 
 
 4^ 
 
(V?l