SEES "SPUDS" WITH CANTALOUPE FLAVOR.
Speaker Before Horticultural Society Predicts Other "Wonders.".
The day is coming soon when potatoes dug from the ground will taste like cantaloupes; grapefruit will be plucked from trees like cherries and the Sahara desert will bloom like a rose garden. Such at least was the prediction made by Howard Dean, professor of chemistry at Park college, Parkville, Mo., speaking before the Missouri Valley Horticultural society yesterday on the lawn of the home of L. A. Goodman, Fortieth street and Warwick avenue.
Professor Dean said he already had succeeded in reducing the starch of a potato to sugar through chemical treatment. He asserted that be feeding certain plants on formaldehyde they can be made to develop sugar and starch.
He said that investigations now being made by chemists show that plants manufacture compounds that are not normal to them. These investigations, he said, are being continued and chemists are diligently searching the leaves of plants in an attempt to find the agent which converts the carbon dioxide in the air and the moisture into plant products.
when that secret is discovered -- and of its early discovery he is confident -- he said we would possess an unlimited source of energy. The point he brought out was that the possession of that secret would enable man to convert the sun's energy to his own use in any way he desires.
Then it would be possible, he asserted, to fill the Sahara desert with plant life; to grow any plant so that it would taste exactly as its grower wished. He also said, in answer to a question, that it would be possible to raise grapefruit with the bitterness removed. Fruits, he added, could be raised so they would taste just as the grower desired.
Dr. J. C. Whitten of the State university at Columbia, Mo., spoke on the spraying of trees. He declared that spraying is absolutely essential to successful orcharding and explained the best methods of spraying.
Other speakers were Miss Florence H. Russell of Kansas City who told of a visit to Luther Burbank, and Arthur H. Helder, a landscape architect of Kansas City. Prior to the meeting a luncheon was served on Mr.r Goodman's lawn
