His first experiment was with a vegetable. For the sake of
getting seed, he planted some Early Rose potatoes in his mother's
garden. In the whole patch only one seed-ball developed, and this he
watched with constant care. Great was his disappointment, therefore,
when one morning, just as it was ready to be picked, he found that it
had disappeared. A careful search failed to recover the missing ball,
but as he thought the matter over, while at work, it struck Luther that
perhaps a dog had knocked it off in bounding through the garden. Looking
more carefully for it, he found the ball twenty feet away from the vine
on which it had hung. In it were twenty-three small, well-developed
seeds. These he planted with great care, and from one of them came the
first Burbank potatoes. The wealth of the country was materially
increased by this discovery; the wealth of the boy only to the amount of
one hundred and twenty-five dollars, which he used in attending a better
school than he had before been able to enjoy.
In 1875 Mr. Burbank, to secure, as he said, "a climate which should be
an ally and not an enemy to his work," moved to Santa Rosa, California.
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