Then I begin to think of the wonderful work in flowers, fruits, and plants performed by Hugo de Vries and our own Luther Burbank, and as I recall their achievements I feel the opening up of a new realm before me. Never can I forget the joy of a couple of days with Burbank at his home at Santa Rosa, and his "proving grounds," at Sebastopol. I there saw his winter rhubarb, and as we walked along we came to his cactus patch. The first section was of the rude, prickly leaves I was so familiar with on the desert; the next section less prickly and so on, until at last, with a frolic, Mr. Burbank "dived" into the cactus, rubbed his face and ears against the great leaves and demonstrated them free from every vestige of a thorn.
Then we saw flowers that he had completely changed, in size, color, form, and odor, and when you ask how it was all done he declares that any man or woman with the necessary patience and skill (and skill comes with patience) can produce results as apparently marvelous as his own. For the marvel is apparent and not real; it is nothing but the understanding and application of natural laws; laws that Darwin and others have well understood and enunciated.
At Sebastopol I had the joy of seeing him work in the selection of plum trees. Row after row of young bearing plum trees stood before us. With two men following him, one with black strings, and the other with white, he began. Picking a plum from the first tree, he bit into it. I did likewise. To me it seemed a good plum. He rapidly commented upon: 1, its appearance, shape, etc.; 2, color; 3, firmness of texture; 4, flavor; 5, sweetness. Then he did the same with the tree: its extent of foliage, shapeliness, etc. All these things had to be considered. The first few trees he took very slowly and deliberately in order that I might clearly comprehend what he was after. Then, almost as quickly as his eye fell upon a tree, he had put his teeth into the fruit, his trained intellect had decided whether the tree was worth keeping or killing, and as he said "keep" or "kill," the attendants tied on the corresponding white or black strings. To produce the plum he wanted he assured me he has destroyed over a million trees.
His apple trees are perfect marvels. Some of them bear upwards of two hundred different kinds of apples, and he says it is comparatively easy to produce an apple of any color, texture, size, flavor, and sweetness desired.
Think what Nature has taught to such a man. He is not what you would call a supereducated man in books; but he has read Nature as few men in the history of the world have done, and she has revealed many of her most intimate secrets to him. And as you talk with him you find in this quiet, unassuming, sweet-spirited, gentle-hearted man a breadth, a largeness, a sweep of soul that are rare.
And Nature gives this same largeness to a woman as well as a man. Women who get into the bigness of the out-of-doors get away from feminine pettinesses just as surely as men do from their narrownesses and prejudices. I have two women friends in California (or had, until one passed on), both of them expert and scientific florists. One lived at San Buena Ventura, and the other at San Diego. The names of Mrs. Theodosia Shepard and Miss Kate Sessions are known throughout the world. Both women determined to devote their lives to a scientific study, out in the garden, of plant life, and each has therefore done things, achieved results that have made her world-famed. How much better this, than to live the narrow, contracted life of most women.
Another woman friend, Mrs. Sarah Plummer Lemmon, wife of the well-known botanist, and herself a botanist known to the whole scientific world, for years accompanied her husband in his expeditions throughout the wildest parts of Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Mexico. I doubt whether there is a person living who has so real and intimate a knowledge of all this country as has this brave and intrepid woman, who, when Apaches were on the warpath, calmly and steadfastly sustained her husband in his scientific work. In storms and perils, in danger from wild animals and wilder men, away from all luxuries and comforts and often deprived of what most people call necessities, this woman communed with Nature and has thereby grown into a large, commanding, powerful, all-embracing soul, as much above the average woman in intellect as an athlete is above a baby.
I am no technical botanist, yet I have had pleasure untold when wandering in canyon, mountain, plain, forest, seaside, and desert in seeking to learn all I could of the flora of the region. When botanists said that the cereus giganteus—the giant suahuaro—was not to be found in California and I knew I had seen it growing on the California side of the Colorado River, there was great pleasure in photographing the few specimens I knew in this habitat and then in hunting for more. How well I remember one day climbing up hill and down, over rocky ridges and dangerous trails and places where there were no trails at all, every now and again seeing fresh specimens, in California, of this cactus "that did not grow in California." And when, at last, I stood on a ridge, looking down into a secluded canyon, where there were a dozen or more (which I photographed), I felt as if, humbly though it was, I were being used as an instrument for increasing the botanical knowledge of the world.