ON THE POSSIBILITIES 
produce new races of plants to withstand the boll 
weevil, the codling moth and the San Jose scale; 
and with complaints so broadcast, and successes 
so marked and so many, does not the perfection 
of disease- and pest-resisting varieties seem an 
important and lucrative field? 
Nor are the insects and diseases the only 
enemies which plants can be taught to overcome. 
Mr. Burbank has trained trees to bloom later in 
the season so as to avoid the late frosts which 
might nip the buds; and to bear earlier, that their 
fruit may be-gathered before the early frosts of 
fall have come to destroy. He has encouraged 
the gladiolus to thicken its stalk and to rearrange 
its blossoms, so that the wind no longer ruins its 
beauty. 
And the prune, which must lie on the ground 
till it cures, had the habit, here in California, of 
ripening at about the time of the equinoctial rains 
of fall. Mr. Burbank helped it to shift its bearing 
season earlier so that, now, when the rains come, 
the prune crop has been harvested and is safely 
under cover. 
In all of these enemies of plant life, the insects, 
and the diseases, and the rains, and the frosts, 
and’ the snows, and even the parching heat of 
the plains, there are opportunities for the plant 
improver. 
[261] 
