Miscellaneous, 



5?4 



[June 1908. 



conspicuous ornament. The' Veddas (abori- 

 ginals of Ceylon) are said to call the tree 

 " Kenawila," and sing odes to it. 



Slereospermum xyloca^pvm (Bignoni- 

 aceaee). — "Padri tree" of India. A large 

 spreading tree, native of South India, deci- 

 duous for a short time in the dry weather. 

 It bears for a week or two a profusion of white 

 bell-shaped flowers. Thrives up to 1,500 feet. 



Tabebuia spectabilis (Bignoniace;e). — A 

 small tree of Venezuela and the West Indies, 

 introduced at Peradeniya in 1881. For a 

 short period in April or beginning of May, 

 when bear of leaves, the tree is an exceed- 

 ingly beautiful sight, being literally covered 

 with masses of yellow flowers, which as they 

 drop from a goldan carpet on the ground. 

 Thrives at Peradeniya (1,500 feet), but as 

 yet only rarely produces seed here. 



LUTHER BURBANK. 



(New Creations in Plant Life, an authori- 

 tative account of the life and work of Luther 

 Burbank. By W. S. Harwood, 2nd Ed., New 

 York, the Macmillan Company, 1907.) 



In a recent contribution to the Tropical 

 A gricv.lt urist, the writer of this review had 

 occasion to divide the history of cultivated 

 plants into four stages. The last of these 

 stages was initiated very recently by the 

 application of definite scientific knowledge 

 to the improvement of plants, a process of 

 which the results lie largely in the future. 

 The last stage but one was described as the 

 epoch of the professional non-scientific 

 breeders, who have advanced the value and 

 beauty of cultivated plants to the condition 

 in which we now see them in the horticul- 

 tural and agriciutural shows of Europe and 

 America. 



Luther Burbank may perhaps be regarded 

 as the culminating figure of the pre-scientific 

 epoch ; though it is somewhat difficult to 

 gauge directly his exact position, because so 

 few of his productions have gained a footing 

 outside America, whilst the proportion of 

 those which are found to flourish outside his 

 native state of California is comparatively 

 small. An idea of the estimation in which 

 his work is held by people in his own 

 country who are competent to judge may, 

 however, be obtained from the fact that in 

 1905 the trustees of the Carnegie Institution 

 of Washington voted a grant of ten thousand 

 dollars a year for ten years for the purpose 

 of enabling Mr. Burbank to carry on his 

 work without wasting energy over petty 

 details of business. Burbank ha6 thus be- 

 come a national institution, and this cir- 

 cumstance may possibly be regarded as some 

 excuse for the strain of blatant journalistic 

 patriotism in which Mr. Harwood writes 



If we penetrate the halo of eloquence in 

 which Mr. Harwood enshrines his idol, a 

 certain amount of interesting and useful 

 information may be extracted from the 

 pages of this book, though it need scarcely 

 be said that a good deal of caution is required 

 in accepting some of the statements which 

 oc cur. Some of the most surprising of these 

 are, it is to be hoped, only errors of haste 

 and want of revision. Thus most readers 

 will be aware that a walnut tree does not 

 obtain its nitrogen direct from the atmo- 

 sphere (p. 62), and that poppies do not produce 

 seeds without flowers. 



The most notable of Mr. Burbank's new 

 productions are to be found among fruit 

 trees and especially among plums. The 

 methods of improvement which he has 

 employed consist in crossing, followed by 

 selection on a very extended scale. These 

 processes contain nothing which is either 

 mysterious or miraculous. What is remark- 

 able is the fact that Burbank, so we gather, 

 selects his plants for fruiting qualities whilst 

 they are still young seedlings and before any 

 fruits have been actually produced by them. 

 The testimony that he has made a success of 

 this method appears to be conclusive, and 

 such success can only have been arrived at 

 by powers of intuition and experience of a 

 highly remarkable order. We take leave to 

 reserve our judgment, however, as to the 

 accuracy of the statement that when the test 

 was made of growing a number of the re- 

 jected seedlings, as well as of the chosen, 

 to the fruiting stage, the former were of 

 inferior and all the latter of superior quality. 



Among fruit trees Burbank has essayed the 

 production of a number of complete novelties 

 by the crossing together of totally distinct 

 species. Many of these crosses were entirely 

 sterile, as indeed was only to be expected, 

 whilst some of those which fruited can be 

 regarded as little more than curiosities. 

 Crosses between the plum and the apricot, 

 and between the Californian dewberry and 

 the raspberry are said to have given rise to 

 new fruits of considerable value ; though 

 young specimens of the plum-cot, as the 

 former of these novelties is called, seen by 

 the writer of this review at an English nur- 

 sury man's last year, seemed to show that 

 this particular creation does not take very 

 kindly to a new country. 



Comparable with the last named fruit is 

 the pomato, the result of a cross between the 

 tomato and the potatoe— and we may note 

 ' in passing that the improvement of the 

 potatoe was among the first of Burbank's 

 successes. On the other hand crosses be« 

 tween the blackberry and the apple, and 

 between the raspberry and the strawberry 

 could hardly be expected to give rise to stable 

 new types, and as a matter of fact neither, 

 of these hybrids ever fruited. 



