282 LUTHER BURBANK 



general. All these had been collected and se- 

 lected and prepared for this very purpose. 



With such materials at hand, it was obviously 

 possible to continue the work of developing new 

 varieties on an expansive scale so soon as the 

 grounds were ready, and as we have already 

 seen, shipments of plants from Japan began to 

 be received even before the Sebastopol farm 

 was purchased. 



Materials from Abroad 



The year following the purchase of the farm, 

 grafts of twelve varieties of New Zealand apples 

 were imported. And from this time forward I 

 was constantly in receipt of shipments of seeds 

 or bulbs or cions of rare or interesting plants 

 from all regions of the world. 



Association was established with foreign col- 

 lectors who made a business of securing plants. 

 And as the work became known in the course of 

 succeedmg years, amateur collectors everywhere 

 were kind enough to send me materials, so that 

 the experiment gardens became a testing ground 

 for seeds of many thousands of species that had 

 never before been grown in America. 



Much of this is already known to the reader of 

 the early chapters of this work, but the facts are 

 emphasized anew because an understanding of 



