LUTHER BURBANK 
the same conditions, grew only a few inches; and 
a corresponding rate of growth characterizes the 
seedlings as long as they live. But, although the 
seedlings themselves proved so variable, their 
fruit was singularly uniform in size and quality. 
As to shape, the fruit of the oriental pear is 
usually oblate, approaching the globular. This 
raises a rather curious, if not very important, 
question as to whether the European pear owes 
its very characteristic shape to artificial selection. 
The ordinary pear, as everyone knows, has a form 
that is so individual and so little duplicated, that 
no single word of familiar usage describes it. In 
this regard, as in a good many others, the pear is 
unique. 
One would not commonly think of describing 
anything as “apple-shaped,” or “peach-shaped,” 
or “plum-shaped,” but “pear-shaped” is a cogno- 
men that is at once convenient and definitive. 
So, as I said, the fact that the oriental pear has 
not assumed this shape has a certain interest and 
suggestiveness. 
The hybridizing experiments that were begun 
as soon as I was in possession of the oriental 
seedlings called for more patience, perhaps, than 
almost any other tests that the fruit experimenter 
can make, for the very obvious reason that the 
pear is the slowest to mature of all the fruits grown 
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