LUTHER BURBANK 



rieties, and test out their possibilities was the 

 work of twelve or thirteen years. Indeed, I may 

 say that the work is still going on after the lapse 

 of almost thirty years. 



Yet I began to get conspicuous results almost 

 at the outset, as will appear presently. 

 THE PLUM AS SCHOOLMASTER 



In order that the work should be carried out 

 as conceived, it was necessary that the various 

 plums and prunes of the world should be brought 

 together and, as it were, put into one melting-pot, 

 in which a vast number of hereditary tendencies 

 could be combined and re-combined. The right 

 characters must be selected and wrong ones re- 

 jected. Out of the melange would arise new va- 

 rieties better fitted to meet the old requirements, 

 or adapted to meet altogether new requirements. 



Here on my experiment farms the re-combi- 

 nation was to be effected, and the new products 

 were to be sent forth to benefit not merely the 

 home of their adoption but the world at large. 



So well have we succeeded that to-day the 

 sun never sets on these new productions. They 

 are growing in every temperate zone of both 

 hemispheres. 



There is no country where the direct influence 

 of these products is not felt in greater or less de- 

 gree. But not alone as material products have 



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