Arizona republican., 1905-03-02


 "A quaint smile comes over the face of this grave man as he plucl1s one of the few priceless fruits, the seeds of which are worth far more than their weight in gold. and are the net results of long years of the most patient study and persistent toll.
 "If you swallow one seed he said to my companion, as he cuts the lu cious fruit with his pocket-lNnife, peels away the covering, and discloses the crimson meat, I may possibly forgive you; if you swallow two, l must choke them out of you; if three, then, alas! it must be death.'
 ESQ we eat the fruit and religiously preserve the seed. The flavor is some thing quite unknown to the tongue be- forc--a combination of the flavors of half a dozen fruits. suggesting to some a pineapple, to some a melon, to some a peach, to some an apricot but still wholly without definition or identifica- tion. It is full of nutrients, too; in fact, it has been found that the na tives of some of the southern climes virtually live upon the fruit of one of the crude, partly developed cact, and develop truly Japanese vigor.
 But MT. Burbank opens one more
 
 of the knife reveals a golden meat wholly different in flavor. Each fruit is in form like a fat cucumber flat tened at the ends, say two and a half inches in diameter by three and half inches in length.
 "One of the more highly developed plants, grown to gigantic stature in three years has over six hundred pounds of nutritious food for man and beast in it, and as you look upon this one plant and think of the vast multi plication of it now possible, you begin to see something of what is to come to pass in the reclamation of the waste places of the earth. You call to mind the quotation which he made to friend as he looked out upon the fu- tUre of this, but one of the hundreds upon hundreds of works he is engaged upon for the welfare of man: The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose
 'T asked Mir. Burbank if there might not be in this wonderful growth some thing of interest to the paper-maker; might not the leaf contain a prodi- gious amount of ceflulose fiber suita- ble for manufacture into paper?
 "'No,' he said. that is precisely what have bred out of it. I am mak- ing it an intensive as we'll as an exten- sive, food. eliminating as far as pos sible the cellulose as it appears in woody, fber-lil1e material, and making the whole plant, from root to crown, a reservoir of food. Nature will do her part always. She never lies; she never deceives; but often, in the sight of man. and from his standpoint, she fails. She failed, in this negative sense. in giving to the cactus the thorns and spicules. Nature has her secrets, her disappointments, if you will, and you must listen close to her great heart if you would hear them; then with all haste and power come to her aid. In the cactus very much, from our point of view. was wasted on the spicuIes and thOrns- I have simply helped her by taking away froan her the necessity of producing them, and have left her free to put all her energy upon pro- ducing food It is food, not fiber. that I have sought in the cactus"
 After this quotation from Mir Bur bank MT. Haywood resumes his com ments:
 ''The cactus now becomes a definite. practical food. It may be eaten raw or cooked. The leaves may be put up and preserved, as ginger or melon rinds or citrus. They may be eaten in a variety of ways, while the fruit it. self will prove one of the delicacies of the markets.
 But not Cnly has the constitution of the cactus plants been cared for so that it needs only to be adopted by the world to become a new source of food supply. but it has in the mean while been made so hardy that it will endure the coldest climates; it may be grown from the equator to the pole, or as far north as any vegetation can be produced. The new plants preserve their type also, never reverting but all ways persisting. There is apparently no degeneracy, no return to its coat of mail, but a steady persistence in it's new life-habits and it's physical struc- ture.
 ''It is a most curious plant, too and will grow alike from seed or leaf. All that is needed is to put part of a thick leaf into the soil even to throw it down and let it dry in the sun; in due