6 



Luther Burbank, Santa Rosa, Cal. 



every form can be made to 'break,' no odds how seemingly obdurate it may seem, and 

 when once 'broken,' it may be carried in any direction at will by time, skill and patience ; 

 that hybridity and new forms are the rule under skillful, right manipulation ; and that new 

 types may be permanently 'fixed' by the same patient work. 



" When 1 wrote four years ago, after years of a very careful study and experiment with 

 them, that I was convinced that the whole Almond family could be hybridized, the one with 

 the other, I was laughed at and called a crank by our leading botanists. What would these 

 men call Burbank ? If they called him names he would lead them out into his garden and 

 introduce them personally to just such hybrids, thousands of them growing as saucily and 

 vigorously as if their forms dated back to the Garden of Eden, instead of being forms 

 entirely new to the universe, only a month, year, or a few years old. 



** In the production of new things Mr. Burbank has set his mark very high. His rule is, 

 that he will not propagate for dissemination any new fruit or flower, tree or shrub unless it 

 is the equal of the best of that form in every particular, and its superior in one or more 

 points. 



" In the following partial record of what he has done and is doing, no one but he who 

 has done some work in the line can have any knowledge of the immense labor and skill 

 involved. On the place we see seedlings growing by the thousand of the most difficult kinds 

 to handle, and to give the right conditions in which to germinate the seed, etc. 



" Mr. Burbank has during the past few years grown from selected seed, many of them 

 from flowers poUenized by hand with pollen of other varieties of species, the following 

 seedlings from which to select individuals for fruiting to obtain new varieties : * * ^ 



" I had rather be the originator of Burbank's best Raspberry than be President of the 

 United States. To get at the exact size of this fruit we gathered of it, and all others in 

 fruit in the same soil and culture at the time, just as we would for the market and weighed 

 an ounce of each, and found the following numbers to weigh an ounce : Gregg, as grown 

 here, 28 ; selected berries, as grown in Ohio by Mr. Albaugh, 15 reported ; Hansell, 26 ; 

 Soughegan, 23 ; Beebe's Golden, 20 ; Marlboro, 15 ; Davison's Thornless, 30 ; Golden 

 Queen. 18 ; Brinkle's Orange, 18 ; Shaffer, 13 ; Burbank'' s neiv Berry, 8>^ to an ounce. 



" The new one, a seedling of Shaffer's Colossal, is much brighter colored, very much 

 finer in flavor, nearly double as large, and — well, to be safe, I will say only four times as 

 productive as it or any other Raspberry. I think I would be safe in saying it will give six 

 times the fruit of any other Raspberry, and safe in saying that one ' hill ' or stool of plants 

 will, in the course of a year, produce sixteen times the quantity of fruit of any other Rasp- 

 berry not having the habit of fruiting in autumn and winter. This habit the new berry has 

 in the greatest degree, not only giving an enormous crop of its immense berries at the 

 usual time, but great masses of fruit through autumn and through winter, if mild. 



*' Dewberries. Here we again have a wonderful suf^cess, especially in the seedlings from 

 the well-known Lucretia Dewberry, heretofore considered by far the best of all, but one 

 could quickly see that it was quite small potatoes as here growing beside its lusty offspring 

 in Mr. B.'s grounds. The new ones were much larger, finer flavored, and best of all, very 

 much more productive, and healthier in foliage. 



"Ivilies. Here, again, we have wonders. Mr, Burbank has collected and bloomed every 

 known liliuin that can be induced to flower in this climate. He has found many of this 

 species to hybridize freely. One of then, a native species of this State, seems to be fertile 

 with nearly all other species and to produce strong seeds with their pollen. We may look 

 for some startling new forms in Lilies. 



" I shall make no comment on this vast work now going on in our midst. I have given 

 it only in part ; only the few can appreciate such an undertaking. Mr. Burbank is to-day 

 carrying more than any one man should undertake, but Massachusetts men seldom break 

 down in Sonoma County. 



" I believe that I am the only man that has been taken into the inner temple of Mr. Bur- 

 bank's labor. He doesn't want present notoriety. He doesn't want visitors ; he has not one 

 second to spare to them; he is the busiest man in the United States ; he doesn't want corre- 

 spondence except on strictly business and scientific matters ; he has not hi fig for sate, or to 

 offer for sale, except such things as may be found in his published list of novelties mailed 

 free each autumn to all who wish it." — D. B. Weir, in Pacific Ru7'al Press. 



" Luther Burbank was born on a farm in Lancaster, Worcester County, Mass., on March 

 7, 1849. He received a liberal education, and in the fall of 1875 — when a little over twenty- 

 six years old — moved to California and settled at Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, sixty miles 

 north of San Francisco. Having been from his early years a great lover of fruits and 

 flowers, he bought a tract of land and started in the nursery business. He also began a 

 series of experiments in horticulture, floriculture and pomology, and so deeply interested 

 did he become in these that, about two years ago, he sold the commercial part of his busi- 

 ness in order to be in a position to attend more closely to his cherished experiments. He 

 still retains forty-two acres, mostly devoted to experimental purposes. Of this area, twelve 

 acres of rich, black alluvial soil, sixteen feet deep, are situated in the town of Santa Rosa. 

 Ten acres of sea-sand at Sebastopol, eight miles w^est of that place, give, he finds, the best 



