380 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



sensational. But it has served a useful purpose in stimulating In- 

 terest in matters horticultural. 



Residence of l,uther Burbank, Santa Rosa, Cal. 



I am informed that he was offered $5,000 a year by the Leland 

 Stanford University, of California, to move his whole plant to the 

 university and become a member of the faculty. But Burbank in- 

 sists on being perfectly free. He has declined numerous offers, 

 but he prefers to remain at home and take care of his mother, wlio 

 is ninety-one years old. At the time he quit nursery work in 1893 

 he was making $10,000 a year, and he gave that all up so he could 

 put his entire time into this creative or inventive work in horticul- 

 ture. Carnegie is now giving him $10,000 a year In quarterly in- 

 stallments. He has as high as twenty-four men working for him, 

 but he cannot delegate any of his creative work any more than 

 Shakspeare or Longfellow could have had assistants. He has 

 worked with 2,500 species of plants and is raising many thousands 

 of seedlings each year. He has a wonderful faculty of picking out 

 plants in the early stages of growth to save time. He is unable to 

 impart information as to how he does this, but it is claimed by his 

 friends, those who know him best, he has the power to pick out 

 seedlings at a very early stage of their growth that will give good 

 results, and he thereby saves a great deal of time. I went out to 

 California to find out something the magazine writers had not got- 



