A VISIT TO LUTHER BURBANK. 331 



My wish to see him was, however, met with the greatest cordiality. 

 Others had naturally the same desire, and we were consequently all 

 invited to come together to Santa Kosa, where Burbank lives, and to 

 inspect, under his personal guidance, his experimental plots. He set 

 apart an evening and a whole day for our visit. How many crossings 

 and selections he had to sacrifice for this I do not know. Our party 

 was a rather large one. There was first Professor Svante Arrhenius — 

 the man who with van't Hoff laid the foundation of modern physical 

 chemistry. Among all the savants I ever had the fortune to meet, he 

 certainly is the man with the widest knowledge and the broadest in- 

 terests, and his opinion about Burbank's methods was of the greatest 

 value to all of us. In our party was also the physiologist, Jacques 

 Loeb, the discoverer of many important phenomena in regard to fer- 

 tilization in lower animals. His studies have led him to the question 

 of the causes of life and of those life-functions which give animals and 

 plants their characteristics, expressed in the differences of kinds and 

 varieties. These characteristics can not be studied to advantage except 

 by means of hybridizing. So far no one in the whole world has made 

 crossings on a larger scale than Burbank, and it was only natural that 

 there should be many points in common between the studies of both 

 these men. Our party was under the guidance of Professors Wickson 

 and Osterhout, of the University of California. Both are personal 

 friends of Burbank and, notwithstanding the distance, often visit him 

 to keep posted on the progress of his work. 



Americans, and especially Californians, feel a great deal of pride 

 in their Burbank. He is a very modest man; he does not work for 

 fame, or for honor, or for the acquisition of wealth. He has none of 

 the aspirations of a merchant. He loves his plants, and is enthusiastic 

 over his work and plans. To accomplish something great for his 

 country is his ideal. For his personal self he is satisfied if his work 

 furnishes him a living and enough to carry on his experiments. 



In outward appearance Burbank is a very plain man, more a gar- 

 dener than a savant, with clear blue sparkling eyes, full of life and 

 fun, appreciating humor in others, telling us stories that kept us con- 

 stantly laughing. He lives in a small house with his mother and 

 sister, and has but one servant on the place, as he does most of the work 

 personally. The walls of his room are covered with small photographs 

 of his victories, and during our visit these pictures were taken down 

 and demonstrated to us. 



As a matter of course prunes interest him more than anything else. 

 Of the hundreds of thousands, which he got by crossing, a few are 

 already in the market. To give an idea of the interest connected with 

 such a new kind I may only name the Waynard plum. This is a deli- 

 cious, big and round, dark blue fruit with a taste that makes one think 



