BURBANK'S HORTICULTURAL NOVELTIES 225 



house, a large row of fragrant Verbenas was in full bloom, 

 at the time of my last visit. It was the ordinary European 

 garden-type, but of a uniform pale pink color. All of them 

 were manifestly derived from cuttings from one individual. 

 They had the most delicious flavor of the trailing Arbutus, 

 Epigaea repens, a much-beloved creeping herb of the eastern 

 woods. Burbank told me that, years ago, when busy in the 

 selection of his Verbenas, he was struck by a faint odor from 

 some of the flowers. He did not, however, succeed in sin- 

 gling out the fragrant individual. Next year, he noticed the 

 same odor and was able to isolate the sporting plants. He 

 saved and sowed their seeds, got better scented specimens 

 among the offspring and selected and isolated these. After 

 some years of selection the fragrance was noticeably in- 

 creased and the variety received the name of "Mayflower." 

 It is not constant from seed and it is not known whether it 

 can be made so or not. Ordinary Dahlias have a some- 

 what disagreeable odor. This has been driven out and 

 replaced by the sweet fragrance of a magnolia blossom of 

 the glauca species. The origin of this race was a single 

 plant with a faint fragrance, which Burbank noticed, several 

 years ago, on one of his beds. Through isolation and repeat- 

 ed selection the fragrance has been increased and fixed, and 

 the variety purified from its hybrid admixtures, but, as yet, 

 it is not sufficiently fixed to reproduce itself purely from seed. 

 Whether the original variant was itself a hybrid between an 

 unnoticed fragrant parent and the ordinary form, or only a 

 minus- variant of the new fragrant variety, it is now, of course, 

 impossible to decide. 



Fragrance in fruits is often discovered and improved, in 

 the same way, by Burbank. Even among walnuts he has 

 produced a fragrant variety. More interesting, from a prac- 

 tical as well as from a scientific point of view, is the sweet 

 walnut which lacks the bitter tannin in the coat of its nuts 



