LUTHER BURBANK 
To go back to our cherry seedling, now six 
inches above the ground, if we were to depend 
on nature’s processes, by careful planting and 
cultivation we might produce cherries in seven 
years; but by short-cutting through grafting, and 
short-cutting grafting itself through Mr. Burbank’s 
plan, we shall have our cherry crosses in 1914 
instead of in 1920—five hundred of them all on 
a single tree, so that they can be plucked and 
laid out, first, for a visual selection, to pick out 
the ones which conform to our ideas of color, 
and size, and beauty; and, second, for selection 
through taste—to find the one, or the two, or the 
dozen among them which come nearest the ideal 
of our original mental blue print. ; 
Perhaps of the five hundred cherries spread 
before us, none may fit the blue print; or perhaps 
one or two, approximating it, may show signs of 
further improvements which ought to be made. 
Eliminate the rest, and start afresh with 
those two—begin at the very beginning with them 
again—mix up their heredities with other 
desirable heredities from near or far, grow seed- 
lings, produce quick fruit through grafting, and 
select again. 
Every little bit Mr. Burbank has, as the mela 
bors choose to call it, a $10,000 bonfire. 
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