BURBANK'S WORK 217 



worth up to eight hundred dollars per thousand 

 feet. 



MONEY VALUE OF IMPROVED FLOWERS 



While Luther Burbank has thus contributed 

 to the wealth of nations as few men ever have, 

 he is at the same time, and above all things, an 

 artist. I might devote several pages to the 

 change "into something rich and strange" he 

 has brought about in daisies, poppies, roses, 

 gladioli, dahlias, lilies, and dozens of other 

 flowers, enhancing thereby their commercial 

 value in proportion to their greater beauty of 

 form and color and their more delectable fra- 

 grance, not to speak of the increased vigor and 

 immunity to plant diseases! By way of show- 

 ing the tremendous commercial possibilities in 

 improved flowers let me repeat from the Pre- 

 face a few lines from a letter written to me by 

 Mr. Burbank : 



Twenty years ago the carnation was thought to be 

 about as nearly perfect as it could be made. On a visit 

 to Long Island I told Mr. Charles W. Ward a simple 

 thing which I had discovered regarding the carnation, 

 and he told me, before he died here in California, many 

 times, that he made considerably more than half a mil- 

 lion dollars out of the carnation from my plan, as he 

 used to say, "before the other fellows got on to it." 



Theodore Roosevelt declared that "Mr. Bur- 

 bank is a man who does things that are of much 

 benefit to mankind and we should do all in our 

 power to help him." Help him, that is, by not 



