34 Breeding Plants and Animak. 



remarkable bulls." We are all looking for a Messenger 

 or a Lord Wilton. As Prof. Hansen, of South Dakota, 

 the foremost breeder of hardy fruits, says : "We are all 

 looking for Shakespeares among plants and animals." 

 Luther Burbank writes no manuals on breeding 

 plants. With his own hands he writes his manuals 

 on achievements in new creations. This man is doing 

 more to inspire breeders of plants and animals than 

 any dozen writers. His is a working philosophy. It 

 seems to him mainly art. He works with the plants 

 and secures marvelous results. Some of his methods 

 and theories he has not interpreted in writing, nor or- 

 ally. IJe knows more than he tells. The plants have 

 taught him how to treat them. He has dealt with the 

 plants rather than interpreted in language the philoso- 

 phy of breeding. His simple statement that the breeder 

 must deal with immense numbers is the most important 

 factor in his philosophy and in his work. He has learned 

 by experience that the breeder must find that rare plant 

 m thousands, or in hundreds of thousands, which com- 

 bines the desired breeding elements. This theory leads 

 him to grow immense numbers of plants and save only 

 the few. It leads him to creep about on his hands and 

 knees among wild flowers, hunting for that rare plant 

 in many thousands which varies in the desired direction 

 It induces him to search long for many of these rare 

 plants that he may grow progeny from each and dis- 

 card the blood of all but the very few which prove pre- 

 potent, or to have high projected efficiency in the de- 

 sired characteristics. It is not sufficient that a plant be 

 found with some desired variation in its individual char- 

 acter. The power to reproduce that character in a more 



