THE SUGAR PRUNE 135 



different well-known varieties or races of plums. 

 The mixed pedigree of the product is recorded 

 in this motley galaxy of offspring; but details as 

 to all the parental crosses, tracing back along an 

 experimental search of thirty years' duration, are 

 not to be had. The original parents used in the 

 first cross are of course known; but successive 

 generations deal with tens of thousands of seed- 

 lings. So it was impossible for anyone who was 

 carrying out, as I have been, not less than three 

 thousand different plant-breeding experiments 

 each year, involving in the aggregate not fewer 

 than six thousand different species, to trace ac- 

 curately, much less to record, each and every 

 cross-fertilization among the myriad blossoms of 

 my orchard. 



Yet a chance hybridization might by some good 

 fortune effect precisely the needed combination 

 of qualities to produce a fruit that had long 

 eluded my most earnest efforts at systematic 

 breeding. 



But by my very extensive and varied experi- 

 ence I can judge from the result what the racial 

 strains most probably were that were blended to 

 produce the new hybrid. But even this is not 

 always possible, and not a few among the thou- 

 sands of new varieties of plums that have orig- 

 inated on my farms are of untraced and untrace- 



