338 LUTHER BURBANK 



as to the cranberry, on my father's meadow 

 lands where these plants grew, we used to rake 

 the berries off the vines instead of picking them 

 by hand, so profusely were they clustered. 



A very interesting feature of the blueberry 

 and cranberry pastures, observed even as a boy, 

 was the great variation, sometimes within the 

 same square rod of ground, not only in the size 

 of the berries, but in their shape and quality. 



From the same patch, some blueberries would 

 be sweet and very highly flavored, others insipid 

 and more or less flavorless. But individual 

 patches of the low blueberry V. pennsylvanicum 

 as a rule appeared to be developed from one orig- 

 inal seedling which had suckered out in various 

 directions just at the surface of the ground, the 

 trailing branches rooting under the fallen leaves 

 wherever they touched the earth. 



Individual groups of plants, sprung thus from 

 one seedling, would of course show the same 

 qualities of fruit. 



On one of my last visits to New England I 

 selected from the old blueberry grounds some 

 of the best plants, and transplanted them to the 

 experiment farms at Sebastopol. 



It has often been stated that the blueberry 

 cannot be cultivated to advantage, because it 

 ceases to produce much fruit when removed from 



