How to Judge Novelties-Look to Their Source. 
In distributing this brief list of new fruits and flowers we will ask if it is not 
a very significant fact that the new creations which have gone out from our estab- 
lishment have always received the utmost favor with the growers, dealers and 
consumers everywhere, a large portion of them becoming in time the recognized 
Standards of Excellence, and greatly extending the areas of successful culture. 
They are all carefully tested, not with a few others, but with tens of thou- 
sands, and in many cases with hundreds of thousands of their kind. From this 
vast number to judge by and select from, none but those of superlative excellence 
are ever placed before the public, and these, instead of receiving the fate of a large 
share of the so-called "Novelties" — early oblivion — are, as each season passes, 
growing very rapidly in favor, and a great and ever increasing volume of grati- 
tude and thanks are coming to us from all lands for helping to make the very best 
of fruits and nuts an every-day food for all instead of an expensive luxury for the 
few, and for new trees, shrubs, flowers, grains and grasses which have awakened 
new thoughts of the possibilities of scientific horticulture and of man's power to 
coax nature to produce another Eden. 
The time, the care, and the expense of producing these new fruits and flow- 
ers is simply astounding to those not familiar with the facts. They are usually 
offered ONCE ONLY, all the main financial profits being secured by the early 
purchasers and planters. If in the past we had received only one cent for each 
ten thousand dollars added to the wealth of the world by our plant productions, 
those mentioned in this list could be pased out freely to all who ask, but no great 
undertaking can long exist without some provision for running expenses, there- 
fore the prices accompanying this list. 
Thousands of correspondents imagine that this is a Government station, 
sending orders for our "bulletins," asking endless strings of questions and innu- 
merable favors, all of which are complied with when anywhere within the bounds 
of reason or common sense. 
We have no Government aid, no college endowment, and nothing whatever to keep 
up the zvork except the occasional sale of these new fruits and flowers. Widely known 
experts in law, medicine or any other profession require a fee of from $10 to 
$500 for their written opinion, and we are often advised to adopt the same means 
to protect ourself from so much unnecessary correspondence, which is our great- 
est burden. Most of the questions could be answered quite as well by some of 
the United States Experiment Stations, which have been established and are sup- 
ported by the Government for this very purpose. 
"The originator of a new plant or fruit should have the same protection as other invent- 
ors. iMak^^ears before their merits are known, and the skill, trials, difficulties, patience, 
taH H^Mtea«|^^||fcuicc are wholly unrewarded, for as soon as it is once sold it 
Mfft is a lifelong work, and at threescore and ten is only begun. 
History imn^HM|^Kne name, while poverty may be the reward!"— W. B. K. J., Allen- 
I'enn.^[HH|p 
"No other man has given to horticulture so many valuable things as has Luther Bur- 
bank. The list of fruits he has given to this country is a large one and embraces some of the 
most valuable varieties now grown." — Pacific Rural Press. 
