A VISIT TO LUTHER BURBANK. 339 



culturist, Yan Mons, our large and juicy apples and pears have been 

 produced, that is, by sowing the seed on a large scale and then con- 

 tinuing the selection for one or more generations. About one half of 

 Burbank's grounds was taken up by prunes. He has at present about 

 three hundred thousand different kinds. The number of trees is not 

 so great, however, as he grafts his seedlings on other trees, when they 

 are two or three years old and show some promise for the future. For 

 this purpose he uses the whole seedling, throwing away the roots. We 

 saw small trees with from thirty to forty grafts, and large ones upon 

 which two hundred to four hundred branches were grafted. When the 

 foliage is of different color and form and the branches bear plums, red, 

 yellow or blue, flat or round, small or large, some ripe and others only 

 half developed, the result is strikingly bizarre. When the fruit is ripe 

 he walks along the rows, marking those which are undoubtedly the best, 

 as far as can be judged by a cursory examination. Then a working- 

 man removes all those which for one reason or another are considered 

 valueless. By this method only about half of his original stock is left, 

 and this then receives his careful investigation. Possessed of an in- 

 born talent, he is able to select in a few summers four or five of the 

 best kinds among the hundreds of thousands on his grounds. These 

 are then multiplied, while all the others are destroyed and replaced on 

 the mother trees by the next series of seedlings. These are often some- 

 what assorted even before transplanting from the shallow boxes where 

 they have been grown. Sometimes the color of the leaves indicates the 

 value of a tree, as in crossings between the common cherries and prunes 

 with Prunus Pissardi, which, on account of its brown foliage, often is 

 cultivated as an ornamental tree. In other cases the size of the leaf is 

 an indication of certain properties of the fruit, Burbank's long experi- 

 ence enabling him to see some correlation between leaf and fruit. Thus 

 he can with some certainty discard a number of trees before trans- 

 planting, which naturally saves time and room. 



One of Burbank's favorites is a large ' Marguerite,' which he calls 

 the ' Shasta Daisy,' after the great California mountain of that name. 

 It is one of his improvements of a perennial daisy which grows wild in 

 Shasta county, and is very variable. By crossing and selecting, it has 

 been developed into a plant that excels by its rapid growth and its pro- 

 fusion of extremely large beautiful flowers, which for months cover the 

 ground. These and other characteristics will make the Shasta daisy 

 one of the commonest and cheapest, still one of the most beautiful, of 

 garden plants. 



What makes Burbank's work entirely different from that of other 

 plant breeders is the immense scale on which his selecting is made. He 

 is, therefore, able to make greater improvements than others and in 

 much shorter time. In his work Burbank is guided by a special gift 



