212 GARDENING WITH BRAINS '« 



thanks to Burbank, is likely to be, twenty 

 years hence, as important a commercial asset 

 as plums or cherries, I shall devote a special 

 chapter. 



CHERRIES AND BERRIES 



Much attention has been given at Santa 

 Rosa to making the cherry more luscious and 

 profitable. The Burbank, the Abundance, the 

 Giant, and others combine the best qualities of 

 many carefully chosen ancestors. (Would that 

 human beings could thus have their ancestors 

 chosen for them!) Burbank's cherries are 

 bigger, sweeter, earlier in spring as well as later 

 in the autumn, more sure to bear a crop, and — 

 most important of all from a commercial point 

 of view — ^he has educated the cherry trees in 

 his orchard to grow in such a way that the 

 leaves protect the fruit from bird robbers, 

 while the dense foliage at the same time keeps 

 off the rain and prevents the cracking by which 

 millions of pounds of cherries have heretofore 

 been ruined for the market. 



In the berry patch, Burbank has been as busy 

 a "practical" worker as in the orchard, providing 

 opportunities for the making of many fortunes 

 the country over. It is an old joke that "black- 

 berries are green when they are red." The 

 wags can now add, "and when they are ripe 

 they are white," for Burbank has a luscious new 

 white blackberry. That he has removed the 

 thorns from the blackberry vines, making them 



