LUTHER BURBANK 



audience, waved your hand over it with magic in- 

 cantations, and transformed the water into an ex- 

 quisitely petalled and perfimied blossom. 



Who could ask to witness a more marvelous 

 feat of jugglery than that? 



Yet such miracles as this are matters of every- 

 day observation with the gardener. Is it strange 

 that he finds peculiar fascination in his work and 

 sees in his plants something more than the mere 

 combinations of root and stem and tuber and seed- 

 pod that they present to the casual observer? 

 Rather to the gardener who goes about his task 

 with the right spirit must every plant appear as 

 the most wonderful of laboratories in which mir- 

 acles of transformation, outmatching the utmost 

 feats of the most skillful conjurer, are being per- 

 formed every hour. 



The All-Importance of Water 



I have chosen the imagined incident of the 

 flower seed grown in the bowl on your window- 

 sill because I wished to emphasize the important 

 principle that the one essential element without 

 which no plant can maintain life or take on growth 

 is water. 



The plant grower has always given much heed 

 to soil. He talks of sandy loams and clayey earth, 

 and of humus and fertilizers. And all these, as 

 we shall have occasion to see presently, have vast 



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