LUTHER BURBANK 



acquired. The plants were here before there were 

 animals to feed on or destroy them, so there must 

 have been a time in their history when they had 

 no need for such defense. 



"It must be true, then, that aw r ay back in their 

 ancestry there \vere desert sagebrushes which 

 were not bitter, desert euphorbias which were not 

 poisonous, and desert cactus plants which had 

 not even the suspicion of a spine. It could only 

 be the long continued danger of destruction 

 which could have produced so radical a means of 

 defense. 



"We have, then, but to take these plants back 

 to a period in their history before defense had 

 become a problem in order to produce an edible 

 sagebrush, a non-poisonous euphorbia, a spineless 

 cactus." 



How, in a dozen years, Mr. Burbank carried the 

 cactus back ages in its ancestry, how he proved 

 beyond question by planting a thousand cactus 

 seeds that the spiny cactus descended from a 

 smooth slabbed line of forefathers how he 

 brought forth a new race without the suspicion 

 of a spine, and with a velvet skin, and how he so 

 re-established these old characteristics that the 

 result was fixed and permanent all of these 

 things will be explained in due course where the 

 discoveries involved and the working methods 



[12] 



