CHAPTER X^ 

 MAKING NEW KINDS OF PLANTS 2 



It was not long ago that the finest Tomatoes were 

 so small, tasteless and full of seeds as to be utterly 

 unfit to eat; at that time they were called "Love- 

 apples" and were grown merely as curiosities. The 

 splendid varieties of the present have all been made in 

 a generation. 



All our cultivated fruits have been similarly im- 

 proved. How this is done is well illustrated in the 

 work of Mr. Luther Burbank on Plums. He began by 

 carefully studying the various kinds of Plums obtain- 

 able from this and other countries, with a view to 

 finding out their individual peculiarities and possi- 

 bilities of improvement. Then he crossed American, 

 Japanese and European kinds together, and from the 

 resulting mixture selected the best for further experi- 

 ments, destroying the rest. The results have been 



1 Indispensable for reading in connection with this chapter is "Plant 

 Breeding," by L. H. Bailey. Both the second edition (1902) and the third 

 edition (1904) should be at hand, since the former contains an interesting 

 chapter omitted from the last edition. Also de Vries: "Plant Breeding," 



2 Of the illustrations in this chapter I am indebted to Mr. Luther Burbank 

 for Figs. 231 to 236 and 240 to 245, and to Professor Hugo de Vries for 

 Figs. 247 to 252. 



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