MEN WHO HAVE SUCCEEDED— III. 



LUTHER BURBANK. 

 The Wizard of Horticjlture— Wonderful Results of Hybridization. 



"If little labor, little are our gams ; 

 Man's fortunes are accord. ng to his pains." 



For some years past the name of Luther 

 Burbank, of Santa Rosa, California, has 

 been familiar to fruit growers the continent 

 over, but it was only recently that we have 

 been able to trace anything about the per- 

 son behind the name, when Prof. Wick- 

 son, of California, in a monthly journal 

 called " The Sunset," gave us a beautiful 

 sketch of "The Man, His Methods, and 

 His Achievements." 



Our young readers, who wish to be- 

 come horticultural experts, can study no 

 biography that will be more suggestive of 

 useful enterprise than that of our subject, 

 for his work has be>:n one of real and hon- 

 est effort to do and be, rather than to get 

 and seem to be. 



There is no line of scientific and at the 

 same time practical horticultural effort 

 that brings greater good to fruit growers 

 than that of hybridization, and the pro- 

 duction of new and valuable fruits, and 

 yet how few of our horticulturists have the 

 patience needed to pursue this work. The 

 celebrated M. P. Wilder, of Boston, is said 

 to have always carried with him a pair of 

 nippers and a camel's hair pencil, and a 

 piece of netting, and his great pleasure 

 was to nip out the stamens of the flowers 

 of one fruit, and with his camel's hair 

 brush touch the pistil with the pollen dust 

 from another. Then he would tie the fer- 

 tilized bloom in the netting to prevent in- 

 sects bringing other pollen, and wait pa- 

 tiently for the tirfe when he could plant 



the resulting seeds, and so originate some 

 new and valuable hybrid. This work 

 takes years, it does not always pay in hard 

 cash, but it brings more lasting reward to 

 him who thus works in the interests of his 

 fellows. 



Luther Burbank was a Massachusetts 

 boy, born in 1849, with no especial chances 

 of success. He was slight of build, retir- 

 ing in disposition, but even as a child he 

 showed a love for plants by making a doll 

 of a cactus plant, and grieving deeply over 

 its loss. At school he lacked confidence 

 enough to speak before his comrades, but 

 he was gifted in composition, and succeed- 

 ed in making a bargain with his teacher to 

 accept essays in place of declamations. 



It was while reading an agricultural 

 paper that he noticed the need of an im- 

 proved variety of potato, and set himself 

 the task of producing it. His efforts were 

 successful and he gave the world the Bur- 

 bank. Concluding that California offer- 

 ed him a good opening to carry on the 

 plant and seed business, which he had 

 taken up, he removed there in 1875, with 

 little stock in trade except ten Burbank 

 potatoes, which he had reserved when he 

 sold out the stock to a Massachusetts 

 seedsman, and these helped to give him 

 business standing in the new country. 



After some ten or twelve years Mr. Bur- 

 bank found that his time was too much 

 divided, and that he must concentrate his 

 whole time upon his chosen life work, the 

 production of new vrrieties, and in 1893 

 he published the first of that notable series 



