TWO HOURS WITH LUTHER BURBANK, ETC. 383 



tomato and a potato, but I was not there at the right time to test 

 the quahty of the fruit. He top-grafts largely. He had over 75,- 



000 new plums in bearing this year, at Sevastopol, a few miles from 

 Santa Rosa, besides at his little place, where he has fifteen acres 

 tightly fenced. I could not wait for Mr. Burbank's regular visiting 

 day but saw the long rows of trees from the outside, just as shown 

 by the published photographs. Here are many kinds of plums 

 top-grafted in every tree. The original tree is no longer saved. 

 From the seedling fruits he saves one or two scions only and top- 

 grafts them. At Santa Rosa the season for top-grafting is a long 

 one. If a scion does not bear the second year, he cuts it off and 

 uses that same stock again. That is the end of it. He showed 

 me one apple tree that had 126 kinds of apples on ii. He took 

 a pole and knocked some of them off for me. That remmds me 

 that in southern Russia, between Kief and Odessa, I found a man 

 who had over nine hundred kinds of apples in his orchard, which 

 consisted of only about two acres. 



Mr. Elliot : Mr. Burbank speaks of hardiness ; how does 

 he know a thing has hardiness? Did you find out how he in- 

 jects hardiness into his fruit? 



Prof. Hansen : The only way he expects to get hardiness 

 is to cross with species that have hardiness. Some of Burbank's 

 plums are a combination of six different species. By Mendel's 

 law of heredity, I believe, hardiness may be transmitted the same as 

 any other character. There is no guesswork about it. You can 

 take three or four species and make all manner of combinations 

 of their characteristics. If you do not have hardiness somewhere 

 in the ancestry — for example, if you plant seed of the type of the 

 Ben Davis to secure a hardy apple — you will have disappointments 

 only as the result. You must have hardiness somewhere in the 

 pedigree. If I can get that fact thoroughly fixed m your minds 



1 think it will be well worth my effort today. 



Mr. Elliot: In case of this basket of Malinda, raised by top- 

 working the Duchess, would there not be a tendency to 

 have hardiness injected, or would that be chance? 



Prof. Hansen : Here is good and safe ground : The Malin- 

 da came to Minnesota as a one-year seedling from Vermont, and 

 we can go back no further in its ancestry. But if we could go 

 back we might find its ancestors came over in the Mayflower. Rut 

 at any rate it dates back to a milder climate in western Eu- 

 rope, where they never encounter as hard winters as here. If 

 you were to plant pure Malinda seed you would not get hardy 

 apples in a thousand years. The Duchess dates back to Russia. 

 The Russian apples are indio-enous to Russia, dating back thous- 

 sands of years, long before Tamerlane came out of Asia with his 



