134 LUTHER BURBANK 



the secrets of our seedlings, to determine which 

 are BB and which are Bb stock save only the 

 method of future breeding. 



In spite of our best endeavors it may very well 

 happen that the ten or twelve seedlings that we 

 now select, to be grafted for the continuance of 

 our experiment, include not a single pure domi- 

 nant (BB), but are made up exclusively of 

 mixed dominants (Bb). We have seen that the 

 latter are twice as numerous as the others, and 

 that the two theoretically look just alike; there- 

 fore the chances are two to one that they will be 

 chosen in the majority, and it will not be strange 

 if they are inadvertently chosen to the exclusion 

 of the others. 



Yet this choice will insure that the factor of 

 smallness which we are striving to eliminate was 

 carefully preserved in the germ plasm of the 

 cions of this second generation that we now 

 graft into membership in the aristocratic cherry 

 colony. 



And when, after another interval of two years, 

 these cions come into flower and are mutually 

 cross-pollenized, the seeds they bear, being the 

 offspring of mixed dominants (Bb X Bb), will 

 produce a generation of seedlings precisely re- 

 peating, as regards the quality under considera- 

 tion, the formula of their parent generation. In 



