208 GARDENING WITH BRAINS '^ 



commercial varieties or not." The number of 

 "really useful things that have been introduced 

 by Burbank is proportionally small." And 

 then he has a chapter pointedly headed "A 

 Practical Plant Breeder," which is devoted to 

 the man who gave the world several new 

 varieties of beans and took the string out of 

 pod beans. ^ 



No one has rejoiced more than I at Calvin 

 N. Keeney's clever feat of removing the annoying 

 and indigestible string from pod beans, but 

 Burbank's experimental gardens have given the 

 world a hundred improvements and novelties 

 of as great and much greater "practical" and 

 commercial value. In justice to Professor 

 Bailey it should be added that he wrote the book 

 referred to nearly two decades ago. At that 

 time only a few of Burbank's new or improved 

 vegetables and fruits had got into the markets. 

 He has added a great many since that time; but, 

 as he himself has frequently pointed out, it 

 usually takes from ten to twenty years to 

 introduce a new variety to the public, however 

 obvious its merits. "It is far less difficult," he 

 writes, "to produce a valuable new plant than 

 to convince the public of its value." 



In food matters the public is singularly con- 

 servative and slow to move. My main object 

 in writing this chapter is to exhort the American 

 public to wake up to a full realization of how 

 much Luther Burbank has added to the available 



