FRUIT IMPROVEMENT 97 



The reader will recall the long series of experi- 

 ments through which I was enabled, by taking 

 advantage of a similar malformation in a wild 

 European plum to develop by hybridization and 

 selective breeding a race of stoneless plums. 



Everyone knows, also, that there comes to us 

 from the tropics a familiar fruit, the banana, that 

 is seedless; although perhaps it is not so well 

 known that this fruit has lost its seed through 

 being propagated for long generations by divi- 

 sion. The precise steps through which this de- 

 velopment has taken place in the case of the 

 banana are not matters of record. But its con- 

 dition is similar to that of the sugar cane and of 

 the familiar horse-radish in oiir gardens, both of 

 which have been so long propagated by division 

 that they have abandoned the habit of seed for- 

 mation. The banana in its wild state was practi- 

 cally filled from end to end with large, hard, 

 bulletlike seeds or stones, with just enough pulp 

 surrounding them to make the fruit attractive to 

 birds and wild animals that could not destroy the 

 seeds. Had not a pathological form appeared 

 without seeds, which must be cultivated solely by 

 division, the banana would be a practically use- 

 less fruit to-day. 



And, for that matter, the potato furnishes us 

 with an even more familiar illustration of the re- 



Vol. 3 Bur. D 



