268 LUTHER BURBANK 



with blossoms resistant to moisture, there is 

 unfortunately little to be expected from cross- 

 ing different varieties of this species, because 

 all existing varieties have always been culti- 

 vated under more or less the same dry, warm 

 conditions. 



Indeed, the outlying forms to which one would 

 naturally appeal are chiefly natives of Asia 

 Minor, Palestine, and Persia, and while they 

 might serve a useful purpose, if hybridized with 

 races now growing in America, in giving a tend- 

 ency to variability and perhaps also an added 

 virility, it is hardly to be expected that they bear 

 hereditary factors that would greatly aid in the 

 particular matter under consideration, because 

 of the warm climate to which they and their an- 

 cestors have been habituated. 



Nevertheless, the experiment is well worth 

 making for we know that there are latent quali- 

 ties in the germ plasm of almost every race of 

 plants that are revealed only through hybridiza- 

 tion, and the presence of which would otherwise 

 be quite unsuspected. 



In any event there are differences to be ob- 

 served between individual apricot trees as to the 

 relative hardiness of their blossoms. So material 

 is at hand, with or without hybridization, from 

 which to begin the work of selection. 



