STONELESS PRUNES 87 



destroyed even if they bore stoneless fruit. 

 Those which showed the French prune or 

 ordinary plum type were grafted into older 

 trees to bear. 



All the seedlings from the cross of the sans 

 noyau pollen upon the French prune were 

 grafted and fruited even though many of them 

 exhibited the thorny, dwarf, ill shape of the 

 wild parent. 



After the first generation the seeds of all were 

 mixed, as there seemed no object in keeping 

 them separate. For two or three generations 

 there were all sorts of trees, the greater tend- 

 ency being toward the bullace, which, being a 

 wild type, would naturally be expected to have 

 its characters more thoroughly fixed. 



In the first generation some plums were ob- 

 tained fully twice as large as the fruit even of 

 the cultivated parent. But most of these had 

 stones, and were, moreover, soft, sour, undesir- 

 able fruits. 



All but a few of the more promising grafts 

 were removed from the trees, and the experi- 

 ment was continued with the selected ones. 



In the next generation there was some gen- 

 eral improvement in the growth of the seedlings 

 and the size and quality of the fruit. And in 

 later generations the quality of the fruit rapidly 



