LUTHER BURBANK 
that keep quite as well as ordinary winter apples. 
These furnish the foundation for future hy- 
bridizing and selecting experiments, through 
which, without question, it will be possible to 
produce races of pear having all the qualities of 
flesh that have hitherto made the fruit popular, 
and with the added property of keeping over 
winter. 
Other possibilities of pear development lying 
a little farther in the future and therefore some- 
what more vaguely outlined, have to do with the 
hybridization of the pear with the allied fruits of 
related species. It is well-known that the pear 
shows, in this regard, a strong disinclination for 
entering into such an alliance. The pear may be 
grafted on the quince but it is usually considered 
impossible to graft it on the apple. 
I successfully carried out such a grafting ex- 
periment, however, when I was a boy in Massa- 
chusetts, the cion being a Seckel pear. But al- 
though this grafted cion bore fruit for two sea- 
sons, it then died, probably because of the uncon- 
geniality of the alliance. 
This experiment shows that there is not com- 
plete antagonism between the two species; and 
the same thing is further demonstrated by the 
well-known fact that the apple may be grafted on 
the pear stock; although here also the alliance is 
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