THE CACTUS PEAR 9 



is as definitely revealed when the plant is an inch 

 high as it will be when it has attained mature 

 growth. 



But, on the contrary, our selection made in the 

 hope of securing plants that would bear spineless 

 fruit of excellent quality may prove eventually 

 to have been hopelessly faulty. After waiting 

 three or four or five years we may discover that 

 the plants on which our hopes had been chiefly 

 based bear fruit nearly as spiny as that borne by 

 their ancestor whose habits we are attempting 

 to enable the plant to shake off. 



Nevertheless, the work of removing the spines 

 from the fruit of the cactus has progressed to a 

 stage where the spicules are not only reduced in 

 size, but are so loosely attached that they may be 

 readily brushed from the fruit with a wisp of 

 grass, and in several varieties are as smooth and 

 free from spines and spicules as an orange. And 

 the plants under observation include many in 

 which the tendency to drop the spicules from the 

 fruit has advanced progressively, warranting the 

 confident expectation that in the next generation 

 there will be many more that will present fruit 

 altogether smooth. 



I expect that when the plants of the most 

 recent generation come to bearing some will 

 produce smooth-skinned fruit. 



