THE PLAN BOOKS 
the man who made the records. In some 
cases the data of the Santa Rosa books are 
even more minute and particular than those 
of the larger tests. 
Mr. Burbank has a good many such books. 
as these, covering the experiments of many 
years, embracing many thousands of words of 
notation. For some years when he was 
struggling to make both ends meet, he tested 
seeds for eastern dealers, receiving ten cents 
for each variety tested. This was work re- 
quiring accuracy and record of the strictest 
type: like his records of after years, it was 
scientifically and commercially exact. 
It will be seen, the more closely one studies 
the scope and sweep of this great work, that 
accuracy of record on essentials is imperative. 
A single error in this would throw out of gear, 
so to speak, the whole machinery of a test. 
The creator of the new fruit or vegetable or 
flower would be utterly unable to tell whether 
he was proceeding upon definite lines or 
running through a whole series haphazard, 
intermixing everywhere into other tests and 
rendering the whole invalid. First and above 
all, in a work of breeding carried on upon a 
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