52 Master Minds of Modern Science 



photographs, appeared in scores of different papers all 

 over the country, and in a month the plant wizard was 

 famous. 



Now what a change came over the scene! Visitors 

 began to pour in, and letters in amazing numbers. Three 

 years later more than six thousand visitors, many coming 

 from the farthest points of the earth, visited the gardens 

 at Santa Rosa, and the number of letters received some- 

 times exceeded three hundred a day. Better still, the 

 Carnegie Institute recognized the work of Luther Bur- 

 bank and voted him a sum of two thousand pounds a year 

 for ten years to help him carry out his experiments. 



Now let us turn to the fascinating world of wonders 

 which Burbank's patient experiments have opened up to 

 the world of farming and gardening, and also to those 

 who like good fruits for dessert. 



As we have said, his first novelty was the Burbank 

 potato, which he produced long before he went to Cali- 

 fornia. He got it by hybridizing the flower of one potato 

 with pollen from another and growing potatoes from the 

 seed so produced. This is a long and tedious process, for 

 in the first season potatoes produced from seed are little 

 larger than peas, and it takes three years to raise them 

 to marketable size. The Burbank potato is beautifully 

 white and so productive that it is reckoned it has 

 added a value of no less than three and a half million 

 sterling to the yearly production of potatoes in North 

 America. 



Next came the Burbank plum, a large, handsome, 

 luscious fruit which was so different from other plums 

 that at first the growers, canners, and shippers would 

 have nothing of it. It is now nearly forty years since it 

 first came into being, and it is grown more widely than 

 any other plum in North America. 



Not content with merely producing new varieties, 

 Burbank went on to cross different fruits, and presently 



