LUTHER BURBANK 



had died in infancy. So there was a considerable 

 gap between me and the next older child, and as 

 I ranked eldest in the new coterie, which com- 

 prised presently two other children — ^my sister 

 Emily and my brother Alfred respectively — ^I occu- 

 pied in a sense the position of an elder brother in 

 the fraternity, my half brothers and sisters being 

 so much senior to me as to seem almost like 

 members of an older generation. 



In my work of later years I was to attain my 

 successes very largely through practice in plant 

 breeding of the method of "quantity production," 

 as the reader of these volumes is aware. I have 

 sometimes said facetiously that I gained a clew to 

 this method by contemplation of my own relation 

 to the fraternity into which I was born. 



Our household, like so many other New 

 England households of the period, furnished an 

 illustration of quantity production in the breeding 

 of the human race. And I have more than once 

 reflected with amusement that if my father had 

 been content with a family of twelve offspring — 

 which in these later days would be considered a 

 not insignificant brood — there would have been no 

 horticulturist bearing his name, and it would per- 

 haps never have been known that the factors of a 

 devoted plant developer were in the Burbank 

 heredity. 



[8] 



