r62 PLANT-BREEDING 



potatoes, which was quite a common pursuit in Massachu- 

 setts about the year 1873. He succeeded in raising some 

 new varieties of potatoes in that year, multiplied them 

 during two succeeding summers and offered them for sale 

 to the well known seedsmen, Messrs. J. J. H. Gregory & 

 Son at Marblehead, Mass. They selected one variety 

 among the three he had offered and paid him $125 for it. 

 This happened in the summer of 1875, and in September 

 of the same year, Burbank left Massachusetts and settled 

 at Santa Rosa, California, partly on account of his health, 

 partly on account of the bright prospects which the climate 

 of that part of California offered him for his most beloved 

 occupation, the improvement of plants. For at Santa Rosa 

 almost all the garden plants, which require greenhouses in the 

 eastern states, can be cultivated in the open, and therefore 

 on a much larger, or even on an almost unlimited scale. As 

 an instance, I mention the Amaryllis. 



In the beginning, Burbank rented a small nursery near 

 Santa Rosa, and cultivated market flowers and small fruits, 

 but had to look for work on other farms also, in order to 

 gain money enough for maintenance. It was only after 13 

 years, in 1888, that he had saved enough to buy his present 

 farm. Here he organized a large nursery and soon accumu- 

 lated a small capital, which enabled him to sell out his busi- 

 ness, in the year 1890, and to devote his whole life to the 

 introduction and production of novelties. Three years 

 afterward (1893) he published his first catalogue oh "New 

 Creations in Fruits and Flowers," which gained for him 

 a world-wide reputation and brought him into connection 

 with almost all the larger horticultural firms of the whole 

 earth. 



In 1905 he accepted the Carnegie grant and was appointed 

 an honorary lecturer on plant-breeding at the Leland Stan- 

 ford Junior University. Here he delivers two lectures a 



