NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
the rest have been rejected because they did 
not show improvement over old forms, because 
they did not promise to add anything to the 
beauty or the utility of the world. One plant 
out of five hundred thousand, all the rest 
destroyed, the results of all the labor of a 
decade ending in smoke,—no wonder the 
people living hard by, before they came to 
know what it all meant, pronounced this 
strange man going up and down their country 
lanes so gently and silently, a wild, erratic 
creature—indeed, more than one sagely held 
him bereft of all sound judgment. 
Before passing to a more detailed considera- 
tion of Mr. Burbank’s great achievements it 
will be of interest to note briefly some of his 
leading creations. The list includes: 
The improved thornless and spiculess edible 
cactus, food for man and beast, to be the 
reclamation of the deserts of the world; the 
primus-berry, a union of the raspberry and 
blackberry, the first recorded instance of the 
creation of a new species, together with the 
phenomenal berry created from the California 
dewberry and the Cuthbert raspberry, and the 
plumeot, the union of the plum and the 
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