PEACHES AND NECTARINES 187 



But we can, in a sense, perform the same necro- 

 mantic feat, and lay bare the mysteries of the 

 history of the evolution of the race of peaches, in 

 a quite different manner. 



If you have read the earlier chapters of this 

 work, you will know that the method I have in 

 mind is the familiar one of causing the peach, 

 with its weird record of past events, to blend with 

 another tribe of plants having a somewhat differ- 

 ent history; in order that the conflict of tend- 

 encies thus brought about (as we used to say; 

 or the blending of hereditary factors, to use the 

 popular phrase of the moment) shall bring to 

 the surface and make tangible in the hybrids 

 of a new generation the traits that were sub- 

 merged and hidden in the individual plant 

 before us. 



And when this familiar yet no less wonderful 

 test is applied, we learn, among other things, that 

 the peach, which now holds to its fuzzy coating so 

 tenaciously, at one time had a cheek as smooth as 

 that of any other fruit. For, among the offspring 

 that appear as the result of blending peach 

 strains, there now and again is one that bears 

 smooth fruit. 



Moreover, the smooth fruit that thus appears is 

 closely similar to another fruit which, from its 

 general appearance, would be declared by any 



