LUTHER BURBANK 
And a peach retaining its recognized qualities 
of flesh and having at its center an edible nut like 
the almond with thin shell would obviously be a 
desirable acquisition. 
Such a combination of fruit and nut would be 
doubly desirable if the stone that surrounds the 
kernel can be eliminated as it has been eliminated 
in the stoneless plums. 
As yet very little has been accomplished in this 
direction. ‘There is, to be sure, a Bolivian peach 
which is remarkable in that it has a globular stone 
very little larger than a good-sized pea. The fruit 
itself is of intermediate size and poor quality; 
moreover, it is produced sparsely, and the tree is 
peculiarly subject to the peach maladies. The 
fruit has been thought hardly worth crossing with 
our ordinary peaches on account of its inferior 
qualities, yet the diminutive stone suggests that it 
would be possible by such crossing to produce a 
superior peach having an exceedingly small stone. 
Time and patience would, of course, be re- 
quired to carry out such an experiment, but its 
results could hardly be in doubt. 
It is possible, however, that the experiment of 
reducing the size of the peach stone will prove 
less inviting than the attempt to remove the stone 
altogether. My success in producing the stoneless 
plum points the way to a possible development 
[170] 
