LUTHER BURBANK 



Mr. Burbank was selecting among thousands of 

 plum seedlings, directing his assistants to uproot 

 them and deposit them in three piles, a very 

 small pile for those that he deemed excellent, a 

 medium-sized pile for the fairly good ones, and 

 a large pile for those that were regarded as worth- 

 less. 



An amateur horticulturist who watched him de- 

 clared that he was making the selection much too 

 rapidly, and that he could not possibly forecast 

 the possibilities of the seedling with certainty. 

 Mr. Burbank suggested that he put the matter to 

 a test. 



Accordingly a bunch of seedlings was taken 

 from each pile, and grafted on three plum trees 

 of similar size and character that stood side by 

 side. 



Of course it was necessary to wait two or three 

 years to learn the result. But when the grafted 

 scions were old enough to bear fruit, the accuracy 

 of Mr. Burbank 's prevision was fully proved. 

 The scions from the rejected lot bore no fruit of 

 value. Those from the medium lot bore some 

 fairly good fruit, but not one that produced a 

 variety of exceptional value. 



Meantime the tree bearing the scions that were 

 originally selected as "best" bore such a pro- 

 fusion of excellent fruit, of twenty-three different 

 new varieties, that the amateur who had sug- 

 gested the experiment named it the Klondike, de- 

 claring that he had never before seen so much 

 good fruit on a single tree. 



[62] 



