<$ BURBANK'S WORK 213 



as smooth as ferns, is known to everybody, and 

 pickers bless him for it. Most people, too, have 

 read about his phenomenal berry, but few 

 know what a big thing (it is the largest berry 

 known) and what a luscious morsel he has made 

 of it after twenty-four years of steady improve- 

 ment. It is even finer than the loganberry 

 which has won so much favor the last few years 

 and which it is now displacing; it combines the 

 blood of the red and yellow raspberries and the 

 California dewberry. 



The neglected and despised elderberries have 

 been ennobled and made commercially valuable 

 at Santa Rosa, where their bitter quality has 

 been removed. They grow in "any old arid 

 place"; they can be dried like grapes and they 

 make excellent pies that is, Burbank's im- 

 proved variety does. But pie eaters have the 

 surprise of their lives when they get acquainted 

 with his new sunberry. A well-known pro- 

 fessor who is also a gardener wrote to him: 

 "Without exception I place a sunberry pie at 

 the head of the pie list, and I do this with a full 

 appreciation of the excellence of cherry pie, 

 apple pie, pumpkin pie, mince pie, berry pie, 

 etc." In view of America's boundless appetite 

 for pie, Burbank was altogether too conserva- 

 tive when he wrote that "a dozen large packing 

 firms could be profitably employed in canning 

 this fruit for two or three months each season." 

 The sunberry thrives in any climate and yields 



