A dead seed will not germinate, a contaminated seed may, but the plant it produces will not be a healthy one and it will only be after a long series of transplantings, with patience and care, that at length a really sound plant will be obtained. The same principle holds good in regard to the human plant. It is hard to offset an evil ancestry. The contamination goes on from generation to generation, just as in the case of the notorious Juke family which cost New York State hundreds of thousands of dollars in consequence of criminality and idiocy. It requires almost a miracle to divert an individual sprung from a corrupt stem into a healthy, moral course of living. There must be some powerful force brought to bear to make him break the ligatures which bind him to ancestral nature and enable him to come forth on a plane where he will be susceptible to the influence of what is good and noble. Such can be done and has been accomplished.
Burbank is accomplishing such miracles in the vegetable kingdom, in fact he is recreating species as it were and developing them to a full fruition. Of course as in the case of the conversion of a sinner from his evil instincts, much opposition is met and the progress at first is slow, but finally the plant becomes fixed in its new ways and starts forward on its new course in life. It requires patience to await the development Burbank is a man of infinite patience. He has been five, ten, fifteen, twenty years in producing a desired blossom, but he considers himself well rewarded when his object has been obtained. Thousands of experiments are going on at the same time, but in each case years are required to achieve results, so slow is the work of selection, the rejecting of the seemingly worthless and the eternal choosing of the best specimens to continue the experiments.
When two plants are united to produce a third, no human intelligence can predict just what will be the result of the union. There may be no result at all; hence it is that Burbank does not depend on one experiment at a time. If he did the labors of a life-time would have little to show for their work. In breeding lilies he has used as high as five hundred thousand plants in a single test. Such an immense quantity gave him a great variety of selection. He culled and rejected, and culled and rejected until he made his final selection for the last test.
Sometimes he is very much disappointed in his anticipations. For instance, he marks out a certain life for a flower and breeds and selects to that end. For a time all may go according to his plans, but suddenly some new trait develops which knocks those plans all out of gear. The new flower may have a longer stem and narrower leaves than either parent, while a shorter stem and broader leaves are the desideratum. The experimenter is disappointed, but not disheartened; he casts the flower aside and makes another selection from the same species and again goes ahead, until his object is attained.
It may be asked how two plants are united to procure a third. The act is based on the procreative law of nature. Plant-breeding is simply accomplished by sifting the pollen of one plant upon the stigma of another, this act—pollenation—resulting in fertilization, Nature in her own mysterious ways bringing forth the new plant.
In order to get an idea of the Burbank method, let us consider some of his most famous experiments, for instance, that in which by uniting the potato with the tomato he has produced a new variety which has been very aptly named the pomato. Mr. Burbank, from the beginning of his wonderful career, has experimented much with the potato. It was this vegetable which first brought the plant wizard into worldwide prominence. The Burbank potato is known in all lands where the tuber forms an article of food. It has been introduced into Ireland and promises to be the salvation of that distressed island of which the potato constitutes the staple diet. The Burbank potato is the hardiest of all varieties and in this respect is well suited for the colder climates of the Temperate Zone. Apart from this potato which bears his name, Mr. Burbank has produced many other varieties. He has blended wild varieties with tame ones, getting very satisfactory results. Mr. Burbank believes that a little wild blood, so to speak, is often necessary to give tone and vigor to the tame element which has been long running in the same channels. Probably it was Emerson, his favorite author, who gave him the cue for this idea. Emerson pointed out that the city is recruited from the country. "The city would have died out, rotted and exploded long ago," wrote the New England sage, "but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country that came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court to-day."
In Burbank's greenhouses are mated all kinds of wild and tame varieties of potatoes, producing crosses and combinations truly wonderful as regards shape, size, and color. One of the most palatable potatoes he has produced is a magenta color approaching crimson, so distributed throughout that when the tuber is cut, no matter from what angle, it presents concentric geometric figures, some having a resemblance to human and animal faces.
Before entering on any experiment to produce a new creation, Burbank always takes into consideration the practical end of the experiment, that is, what the value of the result will be as a practical factor in commerce, how much it will benefit the race. He does not experiment for a pastime or a novelty, but for a purpose. His object in regard to the potato is to make it a richer, better vegetable for a food supply and also to make it more important for other purposes in the commerce of the nations.
The average potato consists of seventy-five per cent. water and twenty-five per cent. dry matter, almost all of which is starch. Now starch is a very important article from a manufacturing standpoint, but only one-fourth of the potato is available for manufacturing, the other three-fourths, being water, is practically waste matter. Now if the water could be driven out to a great extent and starchy matter increased it is easy to understand that the potato would be much increased in value as an article of manufacture. Burbank has not overlooked this fact in his potato experiments. He has demonstrated that it is as easy to breed potatoes for a larger amount of starch, and he has really developed tubers which contain at least twenty-five per cent. more starch than the normal varieties; in other words, he has produced potatoes which yield fifty per cent. of starch instead of twenty-five per cent. The United States uses about $12,000,000 worth of starch every year, chiefly obtained from Indian corn and potatoes. When the potato is made to yield double the amount of starch, as Burbank has proved it can yield and more, it will be understood what a large part it can be made to play in this important manufacture.
Also for the production of alcohol the potato is gaining a prominent place. The potato starch is converted into maltose by the diastase of malt, the maltose being easily acted upon by ferment for the actual production of the alcohol. Therefore an increase in the starch of the potato for this purpose alone is much to be desired.