122 GARDENING WITH BRAINS '^ 



unaided would have taken hundreds or thou- 

 sands of years to achieve. 



So he went his way quietly, putting new colors 

 or fragrance into flowers, taking pits out of 

 plums, removing the thorns from blackberry 

 vines and cactus leaves, making nut trees bear 

 in less than two years instead of iri ten or fifteen, 

 removing the acrid and indigestible tannin from 

 the walnut, creating entirely new fruits and 

 berries, such as the phenomenal and primus and 

 the plumcot, and putting more luscious flavors 

 into old ones, growing some five hundred varie- 

 ties of cherries on one tree, and a hundred other 

 things for the delectation of mankind. 



Burbank is a great believer in the intelligence 

 of plants; he knows that if you give them a 

 chance they'll perform what to our limited intel- 

 ligence seems like miracles. Some years ago he 

 suggested that a motion picture be taken con- 

 densing half a month of the growth of a sweet- 

 pea vine into an eight- minute reel, which would 

 show us the vine wriggling and writhing and 

 squirming, waving its tendrils around in the 

 air, feeling out every inch for some support, and 

 altogether displaying "an inherited intelligence 

 which would be surprising even in an animal." 



Concerning the remarkable intelligence of 

 potatoes, a word will be said in the chapter on 

 Burbank. It would be unjust, however, to put 

 too much emphasis on the intelligence of pro- 

 letarian plants. It might give them mis- 



