NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
proven so successful, he has not hesitated to 
set about producing improved ones, the possi- 
bilities of the potato for doing better and still 
better service to the world being unusually 
pronounced. With this end in view, he has 
gathered varieties, both wild and tame, from 
many different countries, making from them 
a bewildering number of crosses and combina- 
tions. Some of them are curious in character, 
as, for example, the snake potato, a crescent- 
shaped type from South America about three 
inches long and a little over half an inch thick 
in its largest part. The wild potato from Ari- 
zona has a most peculiar form. One would 
never believe it to be a potato. In shape and 
general appearance it is a large-sized raisin. 
Some of the potatoes of this variety are dark 
reddish brown in color, some lighter, but all 
have the distinctive shrunken look. and shape 
of the raisin. 
Such wild potatoes as this form valuable 
adjuncts to the work. Very often a wild strain 
of blood supplies Mr. Burbank just the needed 
element to make a weak race powerful. ‘It 
was Emerson, whom Mr. Burbank most de- 
lights to quote, who said one day on this point: 
88 
