A VISIT TO LUTHER BURBANK. 343 



conducts his experiments, he is able to work on a much greater scale 

 than is possible in Europe. While we can only select from a few 

 hundred of seedlings, Burbank can get tens of thousands into blossom. 

 In this way the number of years necessary to bring about improvements 

 can be considerably reduced. It required in Europe more than half 

 a century to produce the beautiful Amaryllis forms, which we admire 

 so much. Burbank has got wonderful results in much shorter time. 

 In the process of selecting he preferred those forms which required the 

 shortest time to come into blossoms, and by following up this method 

 he succeeded in greatly shortening the duration of life from seed to 

 seed, as it is called. It is evident what this means. Instead of having 

 to wait four or five years after a crossing, before the result could be 

 judged by the flowers, Burbank can make his selection in half the time. 

 This, of course, not only includes saving of time, but also reduces the 

 size of the cultures, and consequently the expenses. Burbank's aim is 

 to make Amaryllis one of the most common ornamental garden plants, 

 which will find its place in parks and private residences, in city gardens 

 as well as near the farmer's humble dwelling. In order to introduce 

 new forms into the stock of Amaryllis, Burbank endeavored to cross 

 them with the related Crinums, and, from what we saw, his first trial 

 was crowned with success. From the Florida swamps he obtained a 

 wild Crinum Americanum, which has proved its fitness for crossing, 

 and at the same time he had in his hothouse varieties from tropical 

 regions, which he was going to cross with more hardy forms, so that 

 they would feel at home in the California climate. 



Among all the above mentioned points upon which I desired to draw 

 special attention is the shortening of life from seed to seed. As the 

 experiments, with a few exceptions, are conducted on perennials, and 

 as vegetative propagation only is resorted to for multiplication, it would 

 in many cases necessarily take several years before the plants flowered. 

 Where repeated crossings have to be made this would cause consider- 

 able difficulty. 



The means which make it possible to shorten the vegetative period 

 are three : first, the splendid climate of California ; second, the selection 

 of the earliest flowering seedlings, and, finally, the method of grafting. 

 Experience has taught us that the best way of forcing the stem or 

 branches of seedlings to an early development is by grafting them on 

 older trees. On a good-sized plum tree may be grafted, as said before, 

 hundreds of seedlings. They will bloom in a couple of years, and as 

 soon as they bear fruit selections can be made. The inferior grafts 

 are then removed, so as to allow room for the good ones to develop more 

 rapidly. 



In the process of artificial crossing the greatest possible precautions 

 have to be taken in the application of pollen. Yet the method is as 



