1 64 PLANT-BREEDING 



year before a score of advanced students and professors, 

 illustrating his new creations by means of specimens and 

 photographs, and explaining the experiments by which they 

 were won. 



In the meantime, the potato which he sold to Messrs. 

 Gregory had proved to be a great success. It had rapidly 

 increased in importance and supplanted many of the older 

 cultures. According to an official statement of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture at Washington made a 

 few years ago, this Burbank potato is adding to the agricul- 

 tural productivity of the country an annual amount of 

 $17,000,000. In the eastern states it is cultivated alongside 

 other varieties and is often indicated by local names in- 

 stead of Burbank's name. But along the Pacific Coast, 

 from Alaska to Mexico, it is now the standard of excellence 

 among potatoes. In fact, it is almost the only variety cul- 

 tivated in California, where the culture of potatoes for 

 cattle feeding or for factories is of hardly any importance. 

 Its tubers are of a large and (what is more important) 

 almost uniform size. 



The evidence which is set forth in this discussion, I 

 gathered mainly during my visits to the Santa Rosa and 

 Sebastopol farms of Burbank, where he was so kind as to 

 explain his cultures to me and to answer all my questions 

 about them. I visited him twice during the summer of 

 1904, and had the privilege of a four-days' intercourse with 

 him in July, 1906. Of course, I had prepared myself for 

 these visits by studying the magazine articles on his work 

 published during the last few years, and among which 

 those of E. J. Wickson in Sunset Magazine may be cited as 

 the most complete and the most reliable. Wherever pos- 

 sible, however, I submitted the statements once more to my 

 host, asking him such questions about them as would meet 

 the doubts which might offer themselves from the standpoint 



