LUTHER BURBANK 



pursuits of the hunter and fisher and put him on 

 the road to future greatness. 



And all along the road of advancing civiliza- 

 tion the friendship with the fruit tree has been 

 kept up. Yet it is only in comparatively recent 

 times, probably, that rapid progress has been 

 made in aiding our coadjutors of the pomological 

 world to step forward and better themselves as 

 man had long ago bettered himself with their 

 assistance. To be sure, our forebears developed 

 many forms of fruit that were not lacking in pal- 

 atability; but the great advances in the improve- 

 ment of orchard fruits are matters of the nine- 

 teenth century. 



Recent progress in this field has been almost 

 as wonderful as progress in the fields of mechanics 

 and electricity. 



The orchard fruits of today that find their way 

 to the markets are so different in jsize and quality 

 from the fruits with which our griindparents were 

 satisfied — even though some of them are grown 

 on cions grafted on the old trees — as to seem to 

 belong almost to different orders, certainly to dif- 

 ferent species from the fruit stocks from which 

 they have been developed. 



Yet what has been done is only the beginning. 

 We speak of "perfected" fruits, and in a sense the 

 word is justified, so conspicuous are the good 



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