Food and flavor, a gastronomic guide to health and good living . ies of various kinds,with many thousands of other fruits, flowers, andvegetables. Such advantages, however, would not have enabledMr. Burbank to make his marvelous improvementsalong all the lines hinted at in the quotation just made. The world owes these choice gifts to the fact that heis a genius, an artist, an epicure, and an enthusiast, aswell as a plant breeder. The most obvious truth which strikes one when heattempts to make a reflective or historical study of theimprovement of our native fruits, is the fact that innearly ev
Food and flavor, a gastronomic guide to health and good living . ies of various kinds,with many thousands of other fruits, flowers, andvegetables. Such advantages, however, would not have enabledMr. Burbank to make his marvelous improvementsalong all the lines hinted at in the quotation just made. The world owes these choice gifts to the fact that heis a genius, an artist, an epicure, and an enthusiast, aswell as a plant breeder. The most obvious truth which strikes one when heattempts to make a reflective or historical study of theimprovement of our native fruits, is the fact that innearly every case the amelioration has come from theforce of circumstances and not from the choice or designof men. . What has been called plant breed-ing is mostly discovery; or, in other words, so far as thecultivator is concerned, it is accident, writes ProfessorBailey, in his Sketch of the Evolution of Our NativeFruits. In another of his books, Plant Breeding,after stating that in 1892 American nurserymen wereoffering 878 varieties of apples, he adds that it is. LUTHER BURBANK GASTRONOMIC AMERICA 511 doubtful if one in the whole lot was the result of anyattempt on the part of the originator to produce a va-riety with definite qualities. These remarks apply to the methods of plant breed-ers in general. But there are exceptions, and LutherBurbank is the most important of them by far. True,he also had to rely on accident, such as the discovery ofa California poppy with a small crimson spot, which hegradually enlarged till the whole flower was crimson;and it is for the purpose of taking advantage of luckyaccidents that he raises plants in such unprecedentednumbers. But chance is only one of his assets. Hehas in his mind a mental pattern, which is made justas real and definite as the pattern of an inventor, orthe model of a sculptor, as his biographer remarks. In other words, his imagination conjures a fruit im-proved along a definite line in Flavor, color, size, orkeeping quality, and h
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Keywords: ., bookauthorfinckhen, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
