For ten years of poverty and severe toil he was engaged, for the sake of
a livelihood, in the nursery business, making, in the meantime, such
experiments as he had time for. During the next twenty years, however,
Mr. Burbank was able to give nearly his whole time to his
nature-studies. His energy is tireless, and his aim is to supply to
humanity something for beauty, sustenance, or commerce better than it
has possessed.
Perhaps among all his productions the greatest good to the world will
arise from the spineless cactus. The scourge of the American desert is
the cactus, commonly known as the prickly pear, the whole surface of
which is covered with fine, needlelike spines, while its leaves are
filled with a woody fiber most hurtful to animal life. When eaten by
hunger-crazed cattle it causes death. After years of labor Mr. Burbank
has succeeded in developing from this most unpromising of plants a
perfected cactus which is truly a storehouse of food for man and beast.
Spines and woody fiber have disappeared, leaving juicy, pear-shaped
leaves, weighing often twenty-five or fifty pounds, which, when cooked
in sirup, make a delicious preserve, and in their natural state furnish
a nourishing, thirst-quenching food for domestic animals.
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