THE MAN WITH THE MICROSCOPE 
123 
had held it earnestly for some time, the petals fell off. 
With his fat baby fingers he tried patiently to put each 
petal back in place. When old enough to toddle he 
chose flowers for pets instead of animals; he used to 
carry in his arms a lobster cactus in a pot. Now I, for 
one, never saw a lobster cactus, and it does not sound 
very pretty to me, not nearly as dainty as a primrose 
or a daffodil. Perhaps you know better, but at any rate 
little Luther Burbank loved his lobster cactus so much 
that when one day he fell and broke the pot and plant 
he grieved over it as another child would weep over a 
lost bird or dog. Perhaps it was the rememberance of 
this broken cactus that made him create, when he was 
a man, a wonderful cactus plant without any prickles, 
good food for man and beast. 
Luther Burbank’s boyhood was very different from 
Charles Darwin’s. Darwin’s parents had money enough 
to send him to the best schools and colleges, Burbank 
was poor and had to go to work when he was still a 
boy. He worked in a factory until he had scraped to¬ 
gether a few dollars, enough to start market-gardening 
and seed-raising. One day he noticed a peculiar seed- 
ball on the green top of one of his potato plants. 
“Fine!” thought he, “Here is a new kind of potato. 
I’ll watch this seed-ball and make sure the seeds are 
planted safely.” 
