1? 



EDUCATED FRUITS 



195 



guide I know for amateur gardeners and orchard- 

 ists who wish to raise better berries and fruits 

 than can be brought from the horribly selfish and 

 short - sighted marketmen — short - sighted be- 

 cause it seldom seems to occur to them that 

 when fruits are alluring in flavor customers are 

 tempted to buy ten times as often as when they 

 are insipid. 



A word about the plums in which Burbank 

 has so marvelously blended the flavors of Ameri- 

 can wild varieties with European, Japanese, 

 Chinese, American, and other cultivated kinds. 

 What importance he himself attaches to these 

 new hybrids you may infer from the fact that 

 he has devoted a whole volume to them in the 

 gloriously illustrated set of twelve books which 

 relate his life work in detail — books which no 

 progressive gardener can aff'ord to be without. 

 The plum volume is as fascinating as a romance 

 — more so to those afflicted with the gardening 

 mania. I have read it three times. 



In 1912 no fewer than 564 carloads of Burbank 

 plums, making more than one-third of all ship- 

 ments, were railroaded east from California; 

 yet the best of the Burbank varieties are only 

 beginning to be known; they are the result of 

 thirty years of hybridizing — of tossing seedlings 

 from all the world into the ** Santa Rosa melting 

 pot," as he calls it. Since 1885 he has intro- 

 duced sixty- two varieties. Among them are 

 plums the flavor of which suggests the peach, 



