LUTHER BURBANK 



Europe and America to take up the improvement 

 of the beet. But while I gladly advised in the mat- 

 ter, and pointed out the lines of development 

 through which further improvement might be 

 expected, was unable to give personal attention to 

 experiments with the beet, owing to the pressure 

 of almost numberless other lines of investigation. 



More recently, however, I have experimented 

 with varieties of the beet that were already very 

 greatly improved, working with seeds supplied by 

 prominent beet raisers who had developed their 

 product by combining the qualities of ten or more 

 varieties of Russian, German, French, and English 

 sugar-beets. 



The crossbreeding experiments through which 

 I was endeavoring to increase still further the 

 capacity of the beet for sugar were, for reasons 

 already several times repeated, neglected. 



But, so far as they progressed, they fell in line 

 with almost numberless other series of experi- 

 ments in plant development, and gave promise of 

 the production of a beet that would have a higher 

 sugar content than any beet hitherto under 

 cultivation. 



Just what may be the limit to the percentage 

 of sugar that the beet can be expected to develop 

 would be matter of mere conjecture, but that it 

 will represent a considerable advance upon the 



[166] 



