CHAPTER XII 

 COLLECTING AND MAKING NEW VARIETIES 



The sort of work that Luther Burbank does with flowers is commonly 

 done in England by amateurs Let us collect every variety of 

 our favourite flozuer and then improve it 



NEARLY all the "good fellows" in America who like a 

 garden have their fling at making a big collection of 

 something, e. g., every kind of rose, lily, peony, or iris. 

 Heaven forbid that I should try to discourage this amiable weak- 

 ness, for the object of gardening is to refresh our souls, and if we 

 take everything with equal seriousness we may miss life altogether. 

 There will always be some who find the mere act of collecting 

 worth while. For, though you may be unable to grow fifty kinds 

 of lilies, you are likely to find one variety that means more to you 

 than all the others, and it is the irony of fate that you may search 

 the books in vain for any hint of the peculiar charm of that lily 

 a charm which is so obvious to you and to all whom you admit to 

 your garden. 



But while I do not quarrel with you for thinking only of what 

 you get out of it, the thing that interests me is What does humanity 

 get out of it? If you had turned over practically every important 

 book and magazine on gardening published between 1787 and 1900, 

 as I have, I fear you would reply, "Nothing but a million articles 

 that dispute about Latin names and a bunch of books that de- 

 scribe the hairs on the leaves." For the bold truth is that hor- 

 ticulture does not even get a decent set of records out of all this 



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