NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



the rest have been rejected because they did 

 not show improvement over old forms, because 

 they did not promise to add anything to the 

 beauty or the utihty of the world. One plant 

 out of five hundred thousand, all the rest 

 destroyed, the results of all the labor of a 

 decade ending in smoke, — no wonder the 

 people living hard by, before they came to 

 know what it all meant, pronounced this 

 strange man going up and down their country 

 lanes so gently and silently, a wild, erratic 

 creature — indeed, more than one sagely held 

 him bereft of all sound judgment. 



Before passing to a more detailed considera- 

 tion of Mr. Burbank's great achievements it 

 will be of interest to note briefly some of his 

 leading creations. The list includes: 



The improved thornless and spiculess edible 

 cactus, food for man and beast, to be the 

 reclamation of the deserts of the world; the 

 primus -berry, a union of the raspberry and 

 blackberry, the first recorded instance of the 

 creation of a new species, together with the 

 phenomenal berry created from the California 

 dewberry and the Cuthbert raspberry, and the 

 plumcot, the union of the plum and the 



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