112 LUTHER BURBANK 



A classical illustration of this is furnished by 

 some experiments of Prof. L. H. Bailey, who 

 developed a variety by crossing that seemed to 

 come reasonably true to type one year. Think- 

 ing the variety fixed he sold the seed to a prom- 

 inent seedsman, and it was said that the following 

 year no two specimens of the entire lot bore any 

 close resemblance to each other. 



This happened some years ago, and was so 

 disconcerting to the professor as to lead him to 

 publish the statement that although the laws of 

 heredity held among animals "there was no such 

 thing as heredity in plants," maintaining that for 

 a time the laws of heredity do not apply to plants 

 as they do to animals. 



Needless to say, all doubt on that subject has 

 been dissipated by wider observation. But the 

 hybrid squash has always been one of the 

 most difficult plants to fix as to any particular 

 form. 



Some very interesting and useful experiments 

 might be made in the endeavor to sort out the 

 unit characters that are mosaicked together to 

 make up the squash. If it could be determined 

 that there are pairs of unit characters govern- 

 ing important matters of size and quality, such 

 as are found in so many other plants, an under- 

 standing of these as to their respective properties 



