Hugo De Vries on Luther Burbank

“A unique, great genius!. To see him was the prime reason of my coming to America. He works to definite ends. He ought to be not only cherished but helped. Unaided he cannot do his best. He should be as well known and as widely appreciated in California as among scientific men in Europe.”

“His principles are in full harmony with the teachings of science. His methods are hybridization and selection in the broadest sense and on the largest scale. One very illustrative example of his methods must suffice to convey an idea of the work necessary to produce a new race of superlative excellency. Forty thousand blackberry and raspberry hybrids were produced and grown until the fruit matured. Then from the whole lot a single variety was chosen as the best. It is now known under the name of "Paradox." All others were uprooted with their crop of ripening berries, heaped up into a pile twelve feet wide, fourteen feet high and twenty-two feet long, and burned. Nothing remained of that expensive and lengthy experiment, except the one parent plant of the new variety. Similar selections and similar amount of work have produced the famous plums, the brambles and the blackberries, the Shasta daisy, the peach-almond, the improved blueberries, the hybrid lilies, and the many other valuable fruits and garden-flowers that have made the fame of Burbank and the glory of horticultural California.”