IV.] EVOLUTION OF COMMON TOMATOES. 119 



the tomato, to my mind, is one which appears to have 

 escaped scientific comment. It is the fact that, in Amer- 

 ica at least, the whole body of garden forms is rapidly 

 progressing, or departing from the original type. This 

 original type, or something very like it, was the only 

 tomato at the opening of the century, and it was essen- 

 tially that which the older men of the present generation 



K. Spray of Currant tomato (Lyeopersicum pimpiiiellitolmm). 



knew in their boyhood. The plant was comparatively 

 small, with an erect or upright tendency of the young 

 shoots, with foliage light in color and small, and either 

 thin or much curled, the leaflets tending somewhat to 

 rounded forms, the flowers two -ranked in long and some- 

 times forking clusters, the fruit, in the simplest forms, 

 strictly two -celled, and in the most developed forms flat 



