84 LUTHER BURBANK 



my observations to almost every known form of 

 plant, testing species by thousands, and indi- 

 vidual specimens by hundreds of thousands or 

 millions, on my experimental farms; and only 

 * by exception has complete record been kept of 

 all details of any given series of experiments, 

 beyond the more or less fallacious records of 

 memory. 



Yet I have had the good fortune to produce 

 more and more valued forms of plant life that 

 could justifiably be called new than have been 

 produced by any other single experimenter in all 

 time. Had I stopped to make meticulous record 

 of each experiment, I doubt if I should now 

 know as much as I do about even my less im- 

 portant products, and surely should have been 

 able to produce only a fraction of those that I 

 have produced. 



METHODS AND RESULTS 



Yet it must not be supposed that I have alto- 

 gether refrained from graphic recording of the 

 progress of these tests. The fact is quite other- 

 wise. I have kept in the aggregate a vast body 

 of carefully made records, and have had them 

 always at hand, under my eye from day to 

 day, telling of the essentials of all of these 

 experiments. 



