East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1908-11-13
BURBANK AIMS
At C0BLESS CORN
GRAIN HAS POSSIBILITIES,
SAYS THE WIZARD
Spineless Cacu and SeedIess Grape
10 BE Mere Chlld's Play In Com
parison 10 This Horticultural Feat
-'I'hree-Ply Bourbon May Make
Topper Shout and RefOrmer Grieve.

Luther Burbank is now engaged in
the mightiest labor Of his eventful
career. He is devotng his won
drous talents and his restless energies
TO the work Of taking the cob out of
the corn.
Everything that has gone before
was merely preliminary to this chef
d'ouvre Of horticulture, those acme of
( hybridization. Minimizing the pit in
! the cherry and exercising the stone
/ from the plum, were child's play COM
pared with the tremendous effort Of
without the cob. But Burbank is
working i'm that direction, and has
already achieved sufficient results to
make him confident of success.
POcsy Must Go, But
To be sure, some Of the poetry of
| eating corn on the cob will be re-
moved from human life, and men
who had been accustomed to masti-
cate the succulent ears with a noise
at the table not dissimilar to that
emitted by a satisfied porker at his
trough, will have to eat in silence,
and let their minds go back in happy
recollection to the time when they
sucked the sweet juices from the re-
cesses Of the cob and disturbed their
ne ghbOrs for 10 tables round.
But Burbank is not concerned with
the poesy Of the corn. and ever turns
to its practical side. There is no ap-
peal to him of the frost on the pump
kin or the corn in the shock when he
thinks that there is tremendous |
amount of wasted potential energy |
constantly turned into the useless corn
cob. He proposes to take all the po-
tential energy there wasted and all |
the nutrition that the cob absorbs, |
and put them into the corn itself.
II Has Possibilities.
When Burbank's dream is realized
the husking bee will be a thing of the |
past. 1t is true, but men will go forth
and pick bunch Of corn just as they
now go forth into the vineyard to
Gull a bunch Of grapes.
But the wizard of Santa Rosa has
not yet enlightened the public as to
whether an additional potential en-
ergy will be given 10 the Bourbon
whisky made from this new corn, and
the thought Of the superiority of the
new jag TO anything that has gone be-
fore since the time of Noah's historic
sosh may somewhat give him pause.
The Women's Christian Temperance
Union may hold up a monitory and
threatening finger in case it is as
certained that the demon rum is to
be given additional energy and a su-
perior potency through the new corn
juice.
The Toper's Viewpoint.
The topper, on the other hand, may
welcome a corn that makes one drink
go as far as three did before, and he
may elevate Burbank to a proud ped
estal alongside the man who made
two grains of wheat grow where pre-
viously there had been one.
And so the thought of the cobless
corn and its juices goes on expanding
into an iridescent dream OF tossing
tassles and tangled feet, with joyous
men gathering together to shout,
'Rah for Burbank! Wheel! {
Incidentally, Burbank is to have his {
works published in the most magnifi- /
sent edition known to the American 5
art. Already he has sup {
piled the copy for 10 volumes. tell /
ng of how he got the spines off of (
he cactus, how he expanded the |
shasta daisy; how his potato banished c
'amine from Ireland, how he bade
he stone in the plum and the seed 7
n the grape to be gone, and how in a
MS work of works he is bending to- {
ward the abolition of the cob and the /
of the husk. t
Cost $4,000 q Set. t
The Cree-Ginner Publishing COM C
,any of Chicago, has in charge the i
of the wizards tale in 10
,olumes and so sets of the work are t
o be published at $4,000 a set, with s
wonderful toolings of the binding, a
md hand-painted illustrations Of the