The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-06-18
BURBANK THE PLANT WIZARD His Home and His Garden at
 Santa Rosa WHERE HE BREEDS PLANTS The Great Thaumatureist Is Treless Worker and Spends Many Hours
 Day at His Experi-
 mental Grounds
WHERE HE BREEDS PLANTS

ishing stunts in his dealings with the veg etable world. lives in Santa Rosa, a little town fifty miles north of San Francisco.
 Hundreds of visitors go up to see him every year, says Hugo de Vries in the independent; and Burbank always gives them some of his precious time; but he enjoys your visit only when he perceives that your eyes are quick at the small diff ferences by which he selects his new types.
 Visitors who exepct to see long rows of beautiful plants will not find what they supposed, but instead will see a workshop, with it's utter chaos of tools. the tools being the individual plants, with their almost imperceptible differentiating marks
 If you have no appreciation of such small differences don't try to pay him compliment; your praise will miss It's aim, because by the choice of the plant you mention he will instantly see how much you know about methods and re- suits In plant breeding.
 In person, Burbank is slender, almost to frailness It is now nearly thirty years since he came to California from Massa- chusetts. where he was born. He Is about 60 years of age. He is a tireless worker spending many hours each day at his ex- perimental grounds.
 House Is a Cottage. The finer experiments he conduts at Santa Rosa, on the farm where he lives; but he owns other grounds in the neigh borhood at Sebastopol, where his large cultures are to be found. His house Is a little cottage. where he lives with his old mother, a lady of about 90. It Is ap- preached through closely trimmed box borders.
 In outward appearance he Is plain man, more a gardener than 8 savant. with clear blue sparkling eyes, full of life and fun. He appreciates humor in others, and told us stories that kept us constant ly laughing. He began his business as an ordinary gardener, cultivating fruit trees, shrubs and flowers for sale. In the beginning he had big nursery and won money enough to increase his bus iness rapidly: but he preferred the im- provement of his varieties and the produc- ton of new ones So, as soon as his means allowed, he disposed of his nursery.
 He now sells only novelties, and leaves their multiplication for trade to other men. For some of those varities large companies have been founded, since from the one seeding which Burbank may IldVt WOu hJlu SOiui Huliui cuS Oi of trees have to be produced before the novelty can profitably be brought into trade
 Has His Favorltes.
 When talking, his eyes glow with love of his plants, many of which he remem- bers individually, even for years Some kinds of flowers are his special darlings. He tries to make their bloom brighter and richer, to extend it over a longer season and to make them cheaper so as to bring them within the reach of the poorest people.
 He Is always watching the flowers of the fields and woods As soon as he dis covers a type which is new to him or excels in some attractive quality he will take the plant or its seeds home with him for experiment.
 By crossing and selection he will inn prove the type almost beyond recogni- tion, as in the case of the wild tiger lilies and of the Shasta daisies, whose blossoms are as large as the palm of ones hand.
 His most important recent achievement with fruits is the production of a stone less prune The seed is naked, unpro- tected by the ordinary wooden shell, so that one can bite right through the fruit. These stoneless prunes are. not yet ready for trade, they have still to be im- proved by renewed crosses.
 When this has been done all the exist ing varieties of plums will be crossed with the stoneless prune, so that they, too, will be stoneless, although they will not lose their distinctive flavor. Stone- less prunes and plums will be as com mon then as seedless oranges now are.
 A single instance will show what valuable asset Luther Burbank is in the wealth of the country. His first contribu- tion to our productions was a new po- toto, which now bears his name.
 According to an official statement of the United States department of Agricul- ture at Washington, made a few years ago. this Burbank potato Is adding to the agricultural productivity of the coun- try an annual amount of s17,OO0O0O To convey an idea of the enormous number of Burbank potatoes some one has calcu- lated that if all the tubers produced in one year were arranged In a row, touch- ing one another, the line would be thrice the distance between the earth and the moon.