216 GARDENING WITH BRAINS 



been figured that if a single kernel were added 

 to every ear grown in this country it would add 

 over five million extra bushels of corn to the 

 nation's annual harvest, without extra cost or 

 labor. He has added not one, but one hundred, 

 kernels to each ear of the Bantam corn ! 



Commercially speaking, the most astonishing 

 products of the Santa Rosa and Sebastopol 

 plant schools are perhaps the spineless cactus-- 

 transformed from a "vegetable porcupine" to 

 slabs as smooth as a watermelon and the 

 royal walnut tree. From half an acre Burbank 

 had one year five hundred tons of cactus forage 

 a forage which at Los Banos, California, 

 increased the cows' milk flow 75 per cent over 

 the amount when fed on dry alfalfa hay. A 

 tremendous future also awaits his improved 

 cactus fruits, of which there are many kinds 

 varying in flavor, like apples or pears. As 

 "fillers" far better than most of those now used 

 they will be eaten in billions of American pies. 

 Is it a wonder that Burbank has said that his 

 improved spineless cactus "is worth more than 

 the Burbank potatoes and all my other produc- 

 tions combined"? As for the Royal walnut, a 

 single tree has yielded in one year forty-five 

 bushels of nuts in the husk. But that is only a 

 detail in its commercial value. It grows nearly 

 as fast as the Australian eucalyptus, requires no 

 care, and yields timber in all respects superior 

 to that of the common black walnut, which is 



