ON EARLY YEARS IN SANTA ROSA 



and for future reference in connection with the 

 projected work. 



The knowledge thus gained served well in 

 later years in suggesting material for hybridizing 

 experiments. 



Moreover, the work of collecting, preserving, 

 and shipping seeds, plants, and bulbs taught prac- 

 tical lessons that were of infinite importance later 

 in the instruction of my own collectors in foreign 

 lands, who gathered the materials that had so large 

 a share in the production of new plant forms that 

 finally appeared in my experiment gardens. 



I should have loved dearly to extend the 

 botanizing explorations to still wider territories, 

 and after my nursery business had come to be 

 fully established, about the year 1884, it would 

 have been quite feasible to do so. 



The work was so organized that it might 

 readily have been left to assistants for periods of 

 a year or more, during which I could have trav- 

 eled all over the world and observed for myself 

 the plant products that seemed to invite importa- 

 tion. 



But to have done this would have been to 

 break in on the plan of the projected life work 

 that had already been to some extent interrupted 

 for a period of about eight years, during which I 

 had found it impossible to carry out new experi- 



[101] 



