LUTHER BURBANK 



The matter of size is doubly important because 

 this largely determines the price that a prune 

 brings in the market. The sugar content is 

 obviously important because upon this chiefly 

 depends the drying quality of the fruit. And the 

 matter of early ripening is at least as essential as 

 any other quality, because the prune is dried in 

 the sun, and the fruit that ripens late in the season 

 not only often lacks sunshine to complete the 

 process, but may be absolutely ruined by the rains 

 which begin to fall in the early autumn. 

 How I Achieved Success 



When I began my quest of a perfect prune, in 

 the year 1879, it at once occurred to me that 

 something might be accomplished by hybridizing 

 the French prune with another variety known as 

 the English Pond's seedling but usually called in 

 California the Hungarian prune. This was a large 

 and handsome fruit, while the French prune 

 brought to the combination the qualities of rich 

 flavor and relatively high sugar production. If 

 these diverse qualities could be combined in a 

 single fruit, I saw that a great advance would 

 be made. 



The little French prune was selected as the 

 mother tree and many thousand blossoms were 

 hand poUenated from the Hungarian. 



The offspring of this cross were as variable as 



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