LUTHER BURBANK 
has taken place in the case of the banana are not 
matters of record. But its condition is similar to 
that of the sugar cane and of the familiar horse- 
radish in our gardens, both of which have been so 
long propagated by division that they have aban- 
doned the habit of seed formation. The banana 
in its wild state was practically filled from end 
to end with large, hard, bullet-like seeds or stones, 
with just enough pulp surrounding them to make 
the fruit attractive to birds and wild animals that 
could not destroy the seeds. In this state it was 
practically worthless to man. Had not a patho- 
logical form appeared without seeds, which must 
be cultivated solely by division, the banana would 
be a practically useless fruit to-day. 
And, for that matter, the potato furnishes us 
with an even more familiar illustration of the re- 
nunciation of the most primitive and important of 
all plant functions, that of seed bearing, which 
has developed under cultivation within the past 
half century. 
But among orchard fruits of temperate zones 
the orange and the stoneless plum, as just in- 
stanced, are the only examples of plants that have 
been thus profoundly modified—although a seed- 
less (but not coreless) apple and pear, in the ex- 
perimental stage of development, have been an- 
nounced. These examples, however, are stimu- 
[32] 
