LUTHER BURBANK 
“Some of the experiments which have taken 
the most time and cost the most money have 
produced no apparent result; and some of the 
results which seem most important have been 
achieved in the simplest way, with the least 
expenditure of effort. 
“Out of the entire total of experiments tried, 
there have been not more than two or three 
thousand which, so far, have resulted in a better 
fruit, or a better flower, or a more marketable nut, 
or a more useful plant. 
“On the other hand, I should feel repaid for all 
the work I have done if only a dozen of my 
experiments had turned out to be successes. It 
is the nature of experimentation—we must try 
many things in order to accomplish a few. 
“And this is just exactly what is going on in 
nature all the time—excepting that where we 
might get one success out of forty failures, there 
might be but one out of a thousand or a million 
if the plants were left to work out their own 
improvement, unaided. 
“Then, after all, the unsuccessful experiments 
are failures only in a comparative sense. 
“If you have ever watched the bridge builders 
constructing a concrete causeway, you must have 
seen the false construction which was necessary— 
the stout wooden structure into which the plastic 
[190] 
