THE STONELESS PLUM 37 



And when an attempt to answer the question 

 is made, the story seems absurdly short and 

 simple; yet to my mind it recalls reminiscences 

 of what was perhaps the most strenuous series of 

 experimental efforts that I ever undertook a 

 quest that occupied a considerable share of my 

 time for a period of fifteen years, and which even 

 now is not altogether completed. 



As you follow the outline of this story, please 

 recall that while it takes but a phrase to tell of 

 the pollenizing.of tw r o plum flowers and the pro- 

 duction of one anomaly in the first generation 

 and of some other anomaly in the second, in 

 reality a period of five or six years has elapsed 

 between the pollenizing experiment and the ob- 

 servation of the second generation results. 



When this is borne in mind and it is further 

 recalled that breeding through many generations 

 is necessary to secure the results desired, it will 

 be clear that the production of a stoneless plum 

 was an achievement that required its full share 

 of patient waiting. 



THE RAW MATERIALS 



At an early stage of my almost endless series 

 of experiments in the hybridizing of plums, I 

 chanced to hear of a so-called seedless plum that 

 was said to grow in France, where it had been 



