a single bloom measures ten and onehalf inches in diameter; marvellously improved lilies, cannas, and gladioli; a new race of clematis; columbines with blooms full three inches in diameter; a chestnut bearing nuts eighteen months after planting from the seed; these are but illustrations of the progress made by this man in many lines..

But in the midst of all this improvement in the flowers, the fruits, and the trees of the world, the intensely practical is never for a moment lost sight of. The size, flavor, texture, fragrance, beauty, nutritiousness-these must all conform to the actual conditions of everyday life. Each fruit or flower is

year or two and the thornless desert cactus will be ready for its mission.

I may not more than mention the sugarprune, five or six times larger than the French prune whence it sprang; the hybrid amaryllis, which now, possessing all its own rare beauty and taking on new attractions, has been increased in size until

A new and curious two-petaled seedling lily-a beautiful and unique flower.

challenged before it goes to the world. Can it, or can it not maintain itself under normal, average climatic and other conditions as well as it has been maintained under the magic influence of its creator? If it cannot, it is cast away as unworthy.

And how have these changes in plant life been accomplished?

At the foundation of it all are two causes: 1. The observance of the laws of Nature. 2. The absolute devotion of a life, possessed of marvellous patience, with an intelligence of high order.

There are no secrets in this man's life work. He is as open as a book. He is as ready to tell a friend of his methods, or a stranger seeking earnestly the secret of his power, as he is reticent and retiring when it comes to personal exploitation.

Appreciating keenly any intelligent and generous estimate of his work, he has never been swerved by flattery, he has never sacrificed the slightest fraction of gentleness, modesty, simplicity. While hating with a strong man's hatred all pretence and sham, he is yet so kind of heart that he has lost many a precious day by yielding to the importunities of the curious.

stigma of the other, and thus producing a new flower which perhaps breaks away from the form and character of either parent.

Following up this comes the selection of the very best flowers created from a series of such breedings-those that approach nearest the ideal toward which he is working; and so the work progresses, always the best plants selected for further work, the best

The keynote of the great work which he has accomplished and which is but now fairly begun, is selection, selection combined with breeding, but selection first, last, and all the time. He has before him a given plan, one long cherished, perhaps, and at last ready for development; for example, the creation of a new, or the ennoblement of an old, flower. At the outset he may breed together two separate flowers in order to create what may be termed a working basis, sprinkling the pollen of the one flower upon the

in form, in vitality, in color, in general character. Season by season the work goes forward, until, after years have elapsed, years of anxiety, of failure, of discouragements, the end sought is reached, and the new flower takes its place among its fellows.

Frequently strange variations appear, wholly apart from the line of work in hand; and these are followed up with the intensest interest and care, in order that any new results may be developed. These are not the chief factors, they are ever subordinate, but they may become of wonderful potency. Out of many thousands of new plants whose life course is watched with such infinite pains, perhaps not half a dozen will prove of any value, but this half-dozen, this single one, indeed, is counted worth all the years of toil.

Very much budding or grafting is done, and hundreds of different and allied fruits may be grow

ing at the same time upon one tree. An infinite variety is the result, thousands upon thousands of which are utterly valueless, cr, which is as fatal, are no better than those already in existence. In the production of the primus berry noted above, he secured five thousand seedlings from the many crosses made, and though they produced strange, and, indeed, marvellous results, some of them being the most uncanny and grotesque affairs ever seen, yet not a single plant was found to be of any permanent value, and

When Mr. Burbank left his New England home twenty-eight years ago and became a California nurseryman, he rapidly advanced in his business, and reaped a generous harvest. To-day, as each "creation" comes from his hand, dealers in rare plants and fruits in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, and in his own land, are eagerly waiting the chance to buy; and yet, notwithstanding all, not a year passes when he does not eat up all his profits and steadily encroach upon his hard-earned store in

received with unfailing courtesy, and in many cases, utterly losing sight of the tremendous demands of his every hour, waste many hours of his time. He has no endowment from any individual, government, state, university or other source, his grounds are private and the public has no right, moral, social, or legal, to trespass upon his time or his premises.

In person Mr. Burbank is slender almost to frailness. He is in the prime of life, being but just past fifty years of age. He is a

tireless worker, spending many hours each day at his experimental grounds, or, when in search of some wild flower combination, roaming over the mesas and the low mountains alone with absorbing quest until he has found what he needs for the propagation under way. He has found scant time or inclination for literary expression. I do not think he has written more than two short papers upon his work, and these delivered before small bodies of interested people with no expectation of their ever going further than the ears of his auditors. Yet, in these two short papers, his clarity of vision appears, and his saneness of purpose, and devotion to the noblest in nature.

In one of these addresses he defines the

chief end of the botanists of yesterday to be the study and classification of dried, shrivelled plant mummies, whose souls had fled, rather than the living, plastic forms of life, while he holds this plant life to be as plastic to the hand of man as the clay of the potter. Side lights are thrown upon his life by such expressions as these:

Weeds are weeds because they are jostled, crowded, cropped, and trampled on, scorched by fierce heat, starved, or perhaps suffering with cold,

wet feet, tormented by insect pests or lack of nourishing food and sunshine. There is not a weed alive which will not, sooner or later, respond liberally to good cultivation and persistent selection.

In the profound changes in plant life no martial music is heard these are destroyers, not powder is burned, no big guns brought forth, no producers; the beneficent forces of Nature are like truth itself, quiet, but persistent, and all-powerful.

Everything we now have in fruits, flowers, vegetables, or grain, has been brought to the present state by education and selection, they have all travelled the same road, ever upward and onward, under the tender care of the horticultural missionaries of the past, who really knew but very little of the possibilities of plant life or the trans

cendent forces which Nature has placed in the keeping of plants for the growth and uplift of humanity.

A day will come when the earth will be trans

formed, when man shall offer his brother man fruits, fairer flowers.

not bullets nor bayonets, but richer grains, better

At the meeting of the California Academy of Science, held in the city of San Francisco on the evening of May 18, 1903, a beautiful gold medal was displayed, struck in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Academy and in honor of Luther Burbank, in recognition of his noble services to mankind.