Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/345

Rh, Van Mons, our large and juicy apples and pears have been produced, that is, by sowing the seed on a large scale and then continuing the selection for one or more generations. About one half of Burbank's grounds was taken up by prunes. He has at present about three hundred thousand different kinds. The number of trees is not so great, however, as he grafts his seedlings on other trees, when they are two or three years old and show some promise for the future. For this purpose he uses the whole seedling, throwing away the roots. We saw small trees with from thirty to forty grafts, and large ones upon which two hundred to four hundred branches were grafted. When the foliage is of different color and form and the branches bear plums, red, yellow or blue, flat or round, small or large, some ripe and others only half developed, the result is strikingly bizarre. When the fruit is ripe he walks along the rows, marking those which are undoubtedly the best, as far as can be judged by a cursory examination. Then a workingman removes all those which for one reason or another are considered valueless. By this method only about half of his original stock is left, and this then receives his careful investigation. Possessed of an inborn talent, he is able to select in a few summers four or five of the best kinds among the hundreds of thousands on his grounds. These are then multiplied, while all the others are destroyed and replaced on the mother trees by the next series of seedlings. These are often somewhat assorted even before transplanting from the shallow boxes where they have been grown. Sometimes the color of the leaves indicates the value of a tree, as in crossings between the common cherries and prunes with Prunus Pissardi, which, on account of its brown foliage, often is cultivated as an ornamental tree. In other cases the size of the leaf is an indication of certain properties of the fruit, Burbank's long experience enabling him to see some correlation between leaf and fruit. Thus he can with some certainty discard a number of trees before transplanting, which naturally saves time and room.

One of Burbank's favorites is a large 'Marguerite,' which he calls the 'Shasta Daisy,' after the great California mountain of that name. It is one of his improvements of a perennial daisy which grows wild in Shasta county, and is very variable. By crossing and selecting, it has been developed into a plant that excels by its rapid growth and its profusion of extremely large beautiful flowers, which for months cover the ground. These and other characteristics will make the Shasta daisy one of the commonest and cheapest, still one of the most beautiful, of garden plants.

What makes Burbank's work entirely different from that of other plant breeders is the immense scale on which his selecting is made. He is, therefore, able to make greater improvements than others and in much shorter time. In his work Burbank is guided by a special gift