220 



THE GUIDE Ti I NATURE 



tening patiently, quietly and reverently 

 to the lessons one by one which Mother 

 Nature has to teach, shedding light on 

 that which before was a mystery, so that 



all who will may see and know." 



******* 



Finally, in any summation of the 

 scientific aspects of Burbank's work 

 musl be mentioned the hosts of im- 

 mensely valuable data regarding the 

 inheritance of characteristics, the influ- 



ence of epigenetic factors in develop- 

 ment, the possibilities of plant variability, 

 and what not else important to evolu- 

 tion students, mostly going unrecorded, 

 except as they are added in mass to the 

 already too heavy burden carried by the 

 master of the laboratory, and as they 

 are summed up in those actual results 

 which the world gratefully knows (as 

 Burbank's "new creations." — The Scien- 

 tific Aspects of Luther Burbank's Work. 



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THE MINERAL COLLECTOR 



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Address all correspondence to Arthur Chamberlain, Editor, 56 Hamilton Place, New York City 



A Few Incidents. 



BY WILLIAM C. BANKS, STAMFORD, CONN. 



If mineral collecting serves no other 

 purpose, it at least furnishes a good 

 excuse for many a pleasant, muscle 

 testing tramp among the hills. It 

 gives us a definite object without 

 which oftentimes we would not go. 

 Those who do all their collecting by 

 means of a dealers catalogue may get 

 better specimens, but they miss the 

 zest of searching and the knowledge 

 gained by personal collecting not to 

 mention certain amusing or provoking 

 incidents that make up a large part of 

 the mental records of our journeys. I 

 remember well my first collecting trip. 

 It was about twenty-five years ago. A 

 party of school boys and girls together 

 with several of their teachers visited 

 the old Branchville, Connecticut, 

 quarry. I was one of the party and I 

 remember perfectly how that mine 

 dump looked. Specimens? Why 

 they were there by the wagon load. It 

 seems down right wicked when I think 

 of the amount of good nodular mica, 

 spodumene and other equally attrac- 

 tive minerals that are buried there for 

 the purpose of making an indifferent 

 pasture. Part of our day was devoted 

 to a trip to the Redding glen after 



garnets. We were directed to keep to 

 the left and assured that we would 

 reach there in due time, in the wake 

 of the girls and teachers who drove 

 over. Well, we followed instructions 

 and went several miles too far north 

 before we discovered our mistake. 

 We rejoined the rest of the party 

 finally and were soothed by being told 

 that we were wrongly directed by 

 mistake. That, however, did not can- 

 cel the four or five extra miles we had 

 walked ; but the cooling effect of spring 

 water and garnets wiped out the bitter- 

 ness, if we felt any. 



One day I was busily engaged in 

 sledging out a specimen of nephrite 

 when a wagon load of ladies and 

 gentlemen — well, at any rate, they 

 were men and women — drove past. 

 Said one lady to another, "What is he 

 doing?" 



"Oh, don't you know?" was the 

 reply. "He thinks he has found a gold 

 mine." 



Now, to me, that was amusing, cer- 

 tainly not exasperating. 



I have very pleasant memories of a 

 trip I made to the Roxbury iron garnet 

 mines some dozen years ago. One 

 morning I awoke with an intense de- 

 sire for spathic iron and scenery, and 



