LUTHER BURBANK 
There is no such microscope as this, of course. 
But we can, in a sense, perform the same necro- 
mantic feat, and lay bare the mysteries of the 
history of the evolution of the race of peaches, in 
a quite different manner. 
If you have read the earlier chapters of this 
work, you will know that the method I have in 
mind is the familiar one of causing the germ 
plasm of the peach, with its weird record of past 
events, to blend with the germ plasm of another 
tribe of plants having a somewhat different his- 
tory; in order that the conflict of tendencies thus 
brought about (as we used to say; or the blending 
of hereditary factors, to use the popular phrase of 
the moment), shall bring to the surface and make 
tangible in the hybrids of a new generation, the 
traits that were submerged and hidden in the in- 
dividual plant before us. 
And when this familiar yet no less wonderful 
test is applied, we learn, among other things, that 
the peach which now holds to its fuzzy coating so 
tenaciously, at one time had a cheek as smooth as 
that of any other fruit. For among the offspring 
that appear as the result of blending peach strains, 
there now and again is one that bears smooth 
fruit. 
Moreover, the smooth fruit that thus appears is 
closely similar to another fruit which, from its 
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