40 LUTHER BURBANK 



The second season the blossoms of the freak 

 plum were fertilized with the pollen of the French 

 prune and with that of numerous other plums and 

 primes. 



The seedlings from these crosses were grafted 

 to insure their earlier bearing. In the first gen- 

 eration I obtained some plums fully twice as large 

 as their seed parent. Most of these had stones, 

 however, and were soft, sour fruits. A very few 

 of them were partially stoneless, and from these 

 the work was continued. 



GETTING RESULTS 



The next generation gave some general im- 

 provement in the growth of the tree and the size 

 'and quality of the fruit. All the seedlings of the 

 cross from the Sans Noyau were grafted on older 

 trees where they soon bore fruit, even though 

 many of them showed the thorny, dwarfed, ill- 

 shaped type of tree of the uncultivated ancestor. 



After still further selection there was a very 

 marked tendency to improvement. 



In a large lot of seedlings, in 1904, I obtained 

 two that seemed to me of favorable appearance 

 for much can be known from the quality of leaf 

 and stem long before the time of fruiting. 



And when, two years later, the grafts thus 

 selected bore fruit, it was delightful to find my 



