4 
great horticulturist. He is one of the greatest biologists in the use of existing 
forms to produce others that nature did not make until shown the way.” 
The great poet said : “The art itself is nature.” 
In Burbank’s “Creations” for 1901, his foreword in the little booklet reads as 
follows : “Education and selection are the two greatest forces used in the produc- 
tion of all these fruits and flowers. Not knowing the facts, and because some of 
them happen to be crossed, people often jump to the conclusion- that they are 
summarily produced by crossing, and with about as little science or ceremony as 
a wizard would appear to do it with his magic wand.” 
Cross fertilization is the only process that will produce new varieties, except 
mutations from buds, these are the only ways in which new varieties are produced. 
When anyone speaks about “educating” a plant to be a new variety, I think he is 
mistaken, and that is why I thought that Mr. Burbank’s science was of the Mary 
Baker Eddy or Helen Wilmans order. Others have boldly come out and said 
that by mental processes exercised on a certain plant they can change its character. 
Mr. Burbank says about “educating” a plant : “We do not fill this catalogue 
with testimonials of the value of these new fruits and flowers, though we have 
enough to fill one twenty times as large. The best way to judge of the value of 
any novelty is to look to its source, and the fruits and flowers which have been 
bred and educated on Burbank’s Experimental Farms and now growing all around 
the world are the very best testimony which can be given.” 
Further on in the same book he says: “During the past few years when 
Shasta Daisies were being bred and educated up to their state.” I wish to say, 
and make it as emphatic as possible, that in my opinion no exercise of the human 
mind by way of suggestive thought directed upon a plant can change one cell or 
filament of it. 
Now, let me say a word about the Shasta Daisy. When the magazines and 
the daily newspapers issued side by side pictures of an ordinary daisy and of a 
Shasta Daisy, my suspicions were allayed at once. I said, “if anybody can pro- 
duce from an ordinary daisy growing in that climate a flower of this size it will 
not deteriorate in the East. Therefore, I thought we were safe in taking that. 
We obtained some Shasta Daisy seed. We raised enough plants to fill two frames, 
and when they bloomed, we sent a man up there with a hoe and he hoed them all 
out and threw them over the fence, because they were hardly any better than the 
ordinary field daisy, which grows in the fields of the East. It is only fair to say 
that I believe the Shasta Daisy has been veny much improved since that time and 
is noiy generally recognized as an acquisition. 
On the front of the catalogue for 1901 of the “Creations” of Burbank, there 
is a picture of a plum tree known as the Burbank Plum. The Burbank Plum is 
an importation pure and simple; he got it from Japan and lie never produced 
it at all. In Burbank’s catalogue for that year occurs the following, copied from 
the Santa Rosa “Republican.” The first line says : “The Creation of the Horti- 
cultural Wizard are so wonderful that even science has to be convinced.” 
A great many of his friends say that he does not want to be called a wizard 
and that what is said of him is said without his knowledge and consent, but in this 
