10 LUTHER BURBANK 



MATERIALS FROM EUROPE AND AMERICA 



The more common European plum manifests 

 no less markedly than the Oriental one the tastes 

 of the people by whom it has been developed. 



European fruit growers have had in mind 

 many and diverse qualities of fruit, and they 

 have developed diversified races of plums. The 

 original species from which the best of these 

 have grown is known as Prunus domestica. 



Doubtless at a time sufficiently remote this 

 plum was of the same ancestral stock with the 

 Japanese and Chinese species. But many cen- 

 turies of modification to meet the tastes of the 

 Caucasian races have so altered it that it 

 would be difficult to say what were its original 

 characteristics. 



The Western races, carrying the plum with 

 them to different regions, developed widely dif- 

 ferent tastes and inclinations, and the plums that 

 were ultimately grown to meet the tastes are of 

 course equally diversified in quality. Some are 

 large and some small; some exquisitely sweet, 

 others relatively sour. Some are adapted to 

 eating while fresh; others are most useful for 

 drying or for canning. 



In a word, the races to which the western plum 

 has catered are of complex lineage; they live in 



