276 LUTHER BURBANK 



prepared to find individual seedlings that bear 

 stoneless fruit of greatly improved quality. 



In each successive generation, then, we are 

 dealing with better material getting the chances 

 grouped, if you will. 



WINDING AGAINST ODDS 



But, in a sense, we are running counter to 

 the trend of heredity, because the vastly greater 

 proportion of the ancestors of our plum were 

 bearers of stoned fruits. And so we must con- 

 tinue reshuffling and dealing over, as it were, and 

 watching results. We may lose in one genera- 

 tion what we gained in the generation before as 

 regards the matter of stonelessness ; even while 

 on the whole advancing toward the production of 

 a fruit of desired quality. 



But just in proportion as our ideal calls for 

 the combination of numerous good qualities, does 

 the attainment of that ideal become difficult. 



Even when, at let us say the fifth or sixth 

 generation, we interbreed individuals that have 

 the desired quality of stonelessness, we shall not 

 at once secure what is desired; because our 

 seedlings combine so many ancestral traits that 

 they will not breed true. Even though they are 

 all stoneless there will be a great variation as 

 to other qualities, and it is only by dealing with 



