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LUTHER BURBANK
rieties, and test out their possibilities-was the
work of twelve or thirteen years. Indeed, I may
say that the work is still going on after the lapse
of almost thirty years.
Yet I began to get conspicuous results almost
at the outset, as will appear presently.
THE PLUM AS SCHOOLMASTER
In order that the work should be carried out
as conceived, it was necessary that the various
plums and prunes of the world should be brought
together and, as it were, put into one melting-pot,
in which a vast number of hereditary tendencies
could be combined and re-combined. The right
characters must be selected and wrong ones re-
jected. Out of the melange would arise new va-
rieties better fitted to meet the old requirements,
or adapted to meet altogether new requirements.
Here on my experiment farms the re-combi-
nation was to be effected, and the new products
were to be sent forth to benefit not merely the
home of their adoption but the world at large.
So well have we succeeded that to-day the
sun never sets on these new productions. They
are growing in every temperate zone of both
hemispheres.
There is no country where the direct influence
of these products is not felt in greater or less de-
gree. But not alone as material products have
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