130 LUTHER BURBANR 



ities of the original worthless ancestor were 

 quite eliminated. 



It must be clear that this result could not 

 have been brought about if the various pairs of 

 qualities large size versus small size, sweetness 

 versus sourness, prolific versus shy bearing, and 

 the like had not been separated in the germ 

 plasm of the hybrids in such a way that the unit 

 characters could be sorted out and any good 

 quality transmitted unimpaired by its contact 

 with the opposing bad quality. 



In other words, had there been a blending of 

 traits in the sense in which the older experi- 

 menters imagined the traits of hybrids to be 

 blended, we should have had at best a cross in 

 which the qualities of the worthless cherry were 

 mingled with those of the valuable one; a race 

 which, if better than its worthless ancestor, was 

 worse than its valued one. 



And it might never have been possible to 

 breed out altogether the undesirable qualities 

 that the original cross had introduced. 



SEPARATING THE TRAITS 



But we have seen in the case of the cherries, 

 as we had previously seen in the case of some 

 other plants, and as we shall have occasion to see 

 in numberless others in future, that it is possible 



