ORIENTAL PLUMS 15 



all the best qualities of plums and plumlike 

 fruits; those that bore the imprint of the con- 

 servatism of the Chinese race, the insularity of 

 the Japanese, the diversity of the European, the 

 nomadism of the Persian, the hardiness and 

 variability of the American. 



The best was to be taken from each, and the 

 good qualities developed in five widely varying 

 geographical territories were to be assembled, 

 combined, sifted, and selected to produce fruit 

 having the stability, novelty, variety, piquancy, 

 hardiness, beauty and shipping qualities, and 

 adaptability to new conditions and uses of the 

 races that had left their imprint in varying 

 measure on the ancestral stocks. 



Viewing the work in retrospect, I assuredly 

 can have no cause to regret that it was under- 

 taken, yet it has been a most laborious task. 



Doubtless the time expended on the plum has 

 been at least as great as that devoted to any 

 other single line of my investigations. The 

 labor, especially in grafting, budding, testing, 

 and selecting, has probably been greater than 

 that devoted to any other plant origination, 

 with the possible exception of the spineless 

 cactus. 



Roughly speaking, I might perhaps say that 

 the plum experiments represent, first and last, 



