New Creations in Plant Life: An Authoritative Account of the Life and Work of Luther BurbankMacmillan, 1905 - 368 pages |
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absolutely accomplished almond amaryllis apple apricot Bartlett pear bearing beautiful berry black walnut blackberry blossoms branches bred breeding and selection buds bulbs Burbank says cactus California carried cent character climate color commercial creation crimson crossing dahlia daisy dollars earth experiments fact feet flavor flower forward fragrance fruit fruit-growers garden given gladioli grafting grounds at Sebastopol growing grown growth hardy heredity Hugo de Vries hundred thousand hybrid important improved inches interest larger leaves lilies Luther Burbank ment million Nature never nuts odor parent peach pear perfume petals plan books plant plant-breeding plumcot plums and prunes pollen poppy possible potato produced proving grounds quince rare raspberry record Santa Rosa scientific season seedlings seeds Shasta daisies single sometimes species spicules starch stem strange things thornless tion tomato tree variations varieties vegetable white blackberry wild
Popular passages
Page 247 - If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Page 230 - But these vast possibilities are not alone for one year, or for our own time or race, but are beneficent legacies for every man, woman and child who shall ever inhabit the earth.
Page 311 - I love sunshine, the blue sky, trees, flowers, mountains, green meadows, sunny brooks, the ocean when its waves softly ripple along the sandy beach, or when pounding the rocky cliffs with its thunder and roar, the birds of the field, waterfalls, the rainbow, the dawn, the noonday, and the evening sunset— but children above them all.
Page 366 - In his field of the application of our knowledge of heredity, selection and crossing to the development of plants, he stands unique in the world. No one else, whatever his appliances, has done as much as Burbank, or disclosed as much of the laws governing these phenomena. Burbank has worked for years alone, not understood and not appreciated, at a constant financial loss, and for this...
Page 228 - ... forces in the desired channels. Plant breeding is in its earliest infancy. Its possibilities, and even its fundamental principles, are understood but by few; in the past it has been mostly dabbling with tremendous forces, which have been only partially appreciated, and...
Page 364 - The flowers and fruits of California are less wonderful than the flowers and fruits which Mr. Burbank has made. He is a great and unique genius. The desire to see what he has done was the chief motive of my coming to America. He has carried on the breeding and selection of plants to definite ends. Such a knowledge of Nature and such ability to handle plant-life would be possible only to one possessing genius of a high order.
Page 311 - ... the birds of the field, waterfalls, the rainbow, the dawn, the noonday, and the evening sunset, — but children above them all. Trees, plants, flowers, they are always educators in the right direction, they always make us happier and better, and, if well grown, they speak of loving care and respond to it as far as is in their power; but in all this world there is nothing so appreciative as children, — these sensitive, quivering creatures of sunshine, smiles, showers and tears.
Page 310 - ... in our hands. Man is slowly learning that he, too, may guide the same forces which have been through all the ages performing this beneficent work which he sees everywhere, above, beneath and around him in the vast, teeming animal and plant life of the world. These lines were penned among the heights of the Sierras while resting on the original material from which this planet was made. Thousands of ages have passed, and it still remains unchanged. In it no fossils or any trace of past organic...
Page 228 - ... later extinguish it. Thus, adaptability as well as perseverance is one of the prime virtues in plant as in human life. Plant breeding is the intelligent application of the forces of the human mind in guiding the inherent life forces into useful directions by crossing to make perturbations or variations...
Page 169 - ... cold, wet feet, tormented by insect pests or lack of nourishing food and sunshine. Most of them have no opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious beauty and abundance. A few are so fixed in their habits that it is better to select an individual for adoption and improvement from a race which is more pliable. This stability of character cannot often be known except by careful trial, therefore members from several races at the same time may be selected with advantage; the most pliable and easily...