WONDERS OF THE GARDEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 383, 7 May 1910, Page 10

WONDERS OF THE GARDEN.

WHAT LUTHER BURBANK IS DOING "Luther Burbank is one of the two biggest of the Californian lions," writes Henry T. Finck in Scribucrs Magazine. The other lion is John Muir, a writer and defender of the beauties of California. Mr. Finck visited Mr. Burbank's home at Santa Rosa, fifty miles north of San Francisco, and thus he writes of him:

"Here we have the pleasure of spending several hours with the man who ranks with Thomas Edison as one of America's two greatest inventors. 'The day will come,' Mr. Burbank once wrote, 'when man shall offer his brother man not bullets nor bayonets, but richer grains, better fruits, fairer flowers.'

This ideal of modern manliness he himseif has tried to live up to for more than three decades, and some of the results of his ingenuity and perseverance we were privileged to see and taste.

A MAKER OF NEW FRUITS. '"1 am afraid we are taking your time,' said Mr. Burrougl/i, after our host had entertained us for some time in his reception room, telling us of his aims and achievements. 'On the contrary, you are giving me yours,' replied Mr. Burbank; and presently he took us out into one of his experimental gardens, where we saw flowers of exquisite new colors and gorgeous size that made us feel like Parcifal in the enchanted garden; and we tasted berries and fruits that were more luscious than any that mortals have eaten since the Garden of Eden was destroyed; among them a white strawberry that seems to be fruit and sugar and cream all in one. Here was proof on all sides that plants are, indeed, as the maker of this garden claims, as plastic as clay, and that they can be 'moulded into more beautiful forms and colors than any painter or sculptor can ever hope to bring forth.' And the Burbank plants have no .thorns; his cactus and his blackberry vines are' as smooth as velvet.

VEGETABLES WITH COLLEGE EDUCATION. "Mark Twain defined cauliflower as 'cabbage with a coljege education.' Luther Burbank is giving a college education to hundreds of fruits, vegetables, flowers and trees. He removes thorns, seeds, and poisonous qualities, enables plants to resist frost, accelerates the growth of trees, trebles the size of fruits and flowers, varies the colors and intensifies the fragrance and flavor. Like other artists, he liices to know that you really see and feel what he has done; and nothing seemed to please him more than the proof that we were actually familiar with his creations, by our comments on the improvements he had made in his crimson and crimson-and-gold eschscholtzia and wonderful shirley poppies since we last''raised them, the previous summer, in our Maine garden. He carries on some three thousand experiments at once. In California he has found the most favorable possible conditions for 'hastening new flowers and fruits into being.' CALIFORNIA'S TWO 'LIONS. "Recent progress in various utilitarian and aesthetic ways owes much to him, and will owe much more to him in the future. Burbank and Muir the Oalifornians of the future will have reason to revere as the ancient Greeks revered their demigods; Muir for his noble fight on behalf of the undisturbed grandeur and usefulness of the water-conserving forests and mountains; .Burbank for opening so many sources of limitless wealtl and new vistas of beauty."