The Wizard's Garden

Manufacturer Ford had suggested it. So had Inventor Edison. Their good friend, Horticulturist Luther Burbank, last week virtually decided upon it--to sell his extensive experimental gardens at Santa Rosa, Calif., not to commercial interests (that course never entered his head), not to a great and eager Eastern university ("probably Harvard"), nor yet to the University of Southern California (though that institution made "elaborate overtures"), but surely to a university whose scientists would maintain and perpetuate his labors, and what more appropriate than to Leland Stanford Jr. University, where of recent years he, the world's plant wizard, has been a special lecturer on Evolution? That was the indication, that a "friendly committee" would shortly be formed to determine a fair price for the gardens and another committee, possibly headed by Mr. Ford, would hunt around for funds to enable Stanford to buy. During negotiations, Stanford's chancellor-emeritus, Dr. David Starr Jordon, was acting in behalf of Mr. Burbank.

In the best of health at 76, Mr. Burbank has no idea of remitting his labors. Most men at 76 consider it an honor to be termed "spry." Mr. Burbank is better than spry--he is agile, can stand on his head. This month will round out his 50th year at Santa Rosa, where, aided by the Carnegie Foundation, the Burbank Society and a Federal land grant, he has directed the evolution of plant life so patiently and ingeniously as to produce, among other useful oddities, the spineless cactus, once a nuisance, now a fodder; fat, perennial rhubarb out of a skinny annual; plums with thick skins that endure the rigors of shipping and without pits, which eliminates an annoyance in eating; the flaming crimson poppy from a wan yellow bloom; the popular Shasta daisy, etc., etc., etc.