BURBANK'S PRODUCTION OF HORTICULTURAL NOVELTIES. 465 



nursery and soon accumulated a small capital which enabled him 

 to sell out his business, in the year 1890, and devote his whole life 

 to the introduction and production of novelties. Three years after- 

 ward (1893) he published his first catalogue on New Creations in 

 Fruits and Flowers, which gained for him a world-wide reputation 

 and brought him into connection with almost all the larger horti- 

 cultural firms of the whole world. 



In 1905 he accepted the Carnegie grant and was appointed an 

 honorary lecturer on plant-breeding at the Leland Stanford Junior 

 University. Here he delivered two lectures a year before a score 

 of advanced students and professors, illustrating his new creations 

 by means of specimens and photographs and explaining the experi- 

 ments by which they were won. 



In the meantime, the potato which he sold to Messrs. Gregory 

 had proved to be a great success. It had rapidly increased in im- 

 portance and supplanted many of the older cultures. According 

 to an official statement of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture at Washington made a few years ago, this Burbank potato 

 is adding to the agricultural productivity of the country an annual 

 amount of S 17 000 000. In the Eastern States it is cultivated along- 

 side with other varieties and is often indicated by local names in- 

 stead of Burbank's name. But along the Pacific coast, from Alaska 

 to Mexico, it is now the standard of excellence among potatoes. 

 In fact, it is almost the only variety cultivated in California, where 

 the culture of potatoes for cattle-feeding or for factories is of hardly 

 any importance. Its tubers are of a large and (what is more im- 

 portant) almost uniform size. 



The evidence which is set forth in this discussion I gathered 

 mainly during my visits to the Santa Rosa and Sebastopol farms 

 of Burbank, where he was so kind as to explain his cultures to me 

 and to answer all my questions about them. I visited him twice 

 during the summer of 1904 and had the privilege of a four-days' 

 intercourse with him in July 1906. Of course, I had prepared my- 

 self for these visits by studying the magazine articles on his work 

 published during the last few years, among which those of E. J. 

 Wickson in Sunset Magazine may be cited as the most complete 

 and the most reliable. Wherever possible, however, I submitted 

 the statements once more to my host, asking him such questions 

 about them as would meet the doubts which might offer themselves 

 from the standpoint of a biologist. As a rule, the answers covered 

 my wishes and led to the conclusion that notwithstanding the widely 



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