144 LUTHER BURBANK 



rich flavor and relatively high sugar production. 

 If these diverse qualities could be combined in a 

 single fruit, I saw that a great advance would be 

 made. 



The little French prune was selected as the 

 mother tree and many thousand blossoms were 

 hand-pollinated from the Hungarian. 



The offspring of this cross were as variable as 

 had been expected, and among the seedlings were 

 some that produced fruit of superior quality. 

 Four years later, at the meeting of the California 

 State Horticultural Society, I had the pleasure 

 of exhibiting no fewer than seventy varieties of 

 the most promising of these crossbred seedlings. 

 And in 1893 two new plums were introduced as 

 representing the best selection among the almost 

 myriad forms of the hybrid progeny. 



One of these new plums was named the Giant, 

 the other the Splendor. 



The former is a handsome plum practically in- 

 termediate in qualities between the original 

 parents. It has peculiar value as a shipping 

 plum, and in particular it gained popularity with 

 the canners because its skin has the property of 

 rolling away from the fruit when placed in boil- 

 ing water, leaving the rich, honey-colored flesh. 

 But these, of course, are not the qualities desired 

 in the prune. 



