CHAPTER I 



LUTHER BURBANK: THE MAN AND HIS 

 WORK 



WE naturally think of Luther Burbank as 

 a Calif ornian; but in point of fact the 

 celebrated plant experimenter was born 

 and reared in Massachusetts. The little town of 

 Chester was his birthplace, and he grew to ma- 

 turity on his father's farm in daily contact with 

 nature in her somewhat primitive aspects. 



Mr. Burbank has himself called attention, not 

 without amusement, to the fact that he was his 

 father's thirteenth child; and he has used this 

 fact to give whimsical support to his own familiar 

 method of "quantity production" in plant breed- 

 ing, pointing out that no one of the first dozen 

 children of his fraternity showed any particular 

 propensity to devote attention to plant develop- 

 ment, and drawing therefrom the serious conclu- 

 sion that the full potentialities of any hereditary 

 strain cannot be realized unless the old-fashioned 

 custom of having large families is practiced. 



It is a moral worth giving sober attention, in 

 these days when the Colonial stock, of which Mr. 

 Burbank himself furnishes a rather typical ex- 

 ample, is relatively dwindling, to the detriment 

 at least so some of us think of our civilization. 



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