134 LUTHER BURBANK 



gone ahead and produced the fruit, while a more 

 cautious experimenter would have been occupied 

 in designing hybridizing methods and testing 

 unit characters, and would not have been fully 

 prepared to start on the actual constructive work 

 until about the time you finished." 



Whatever the force of this comparison, it is 

 true that I have often succeeded in producing a 

 fruit of the finest quality by methods that to a 

 less practiced experimenter might look haphaz- 

 ard ; methods that did in point of fact lack some- 

 thing of the precision that an investigation con- 

 ducted solely for purposes of scientific record 

 rather than for practical results might have 

 required. 



Such is the case with a large number of ex- 

 periments in plum breeding. Here I have dealt 

 with such vast numbers of individuals arid 

 brought into the hybridizing tests such varied and 

 so many races, that accurate record of every step 

 of a series of experiments extending over a term 

 of years was quite out of the question. 



My "Combination" plum has a pedigree that 

 includes strains of almost every race of plums 

 under cultivation. 



From the seed of this strange hybrid you may 

 produce trees that will bear fruit closely similar 

 in all respects to at least a score of entirely 



