18 



THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS^ CONVENTION. 



In the first days when the Roman writers spe^k of the apple and 

 pear, they had no idea of the Bartlett pear or the Baldwin apple, or any 

 of the better apples grown in late years. They had a pear in mind that 

 was not over an inch in diameter and of sweet juice, and sweet flesh 

 there was very little of it. They had only little pears and little apples. 

 They hadn't anything such as we know of the apple or pear. They 

 speak of the grape. The grapes were farther along than many other 

 things. Finally we come to the fine art by which a man takes two 

 different kinds of fruit, or what he wants, that is, two pears for instance, 

 or two plums that have good qualities, and crosses this one with the 

 other, thereby getting something new, getting a mixture of the qualities 

 of one and the qualities of another. Then, in the next generation, he 

 has all kinds of mixtures, and out of these mixtures he selects anything 

 he wants. If there are certain good qualities that one pear has. and 

 other good qualities that another has, he can select out of those the 

 things that he wants. 



The work of Mr. Burbank is in the absolute infancy of such work. 

 It is going to be as possible to improve on the fruits of to-day as to 

 improve on the huts of our ancestors when they got out of the hollow 

 tree business. "We are to continue in enormous developments in that 

 line. It was said by Summerville that one had only to chalk out on 

 the wall the kind of house he wanted and he could build to that end. 

 It is possible to chalk out on the wall the kind of pear. plum, cherry, 

 wheat, or anything else we want, and by selecting, by the fine art 

 Mr. Burbank has carried farther than any one else, produce it. ^lany 

 men are learning to do this, because there is no secret about it; it is 

 simply crossing and the selection of what you want, and having the 

 skill to know what you want, and the patience to wait for what you are 

 working for along those lines, everything will come in time. 



I should like to live a few hundred years from now in order to pass 

 through the month of xiugust and see what kind of fruits people are 

 going to have in California in those daj^s, for this country is most 

 favored of all in regard to the production of these high fruits: and 

 they are going to be developed higher than we now conceive of. 



It is a simple thing to prepare almost anything. If one wants to 

 make sugar out of turnips, it would be easy to get a sweeter turnip 

 than usual out of which to make it. It was an open question at one 

 time whether we would make sugar out of beets or parsnips, because 

 both had sugar in them and we could make it out of either one. It 

 would be perfectly possible, if we should lose every fruit tree we have, 

 every orange, and every plum, every pear, every apple, ever^i:hing, 

 to go out into the woods of Siberia and Japan and North America and 

 Europe and take wild fruits and bring them right up again in a few 

 generations to the fruits that we now have, or to even better fruits, 

 by the processes that we know of now connected Avith horticulture. 



I am not telling you an}i:hing new. I come here simply to show 

 my good will. I have been invited many times to address the Con- 

 vention, but always for the last few years I have had something else 

 cn hand. I can't always get away; I am not my own master: I am 

 the servant of a great many people. But it is a great pleasure to me 

 this morning to come here and just say good morning: and I hope 



