THE STOXELESS PLUM 49 



Uphill Work 



This explanation of the origin of the Sans 

 Noyau makes it easier to understand the diffi- 

 culties that attended the progress of this 

 experiment. 



Had the little plum been absolutely stoneless 

 — so that no factor whatever bespeaking a stony 

 fruit remained as part of its heritage — there 

 would probabh^ have been no very great diffi- 

 cult}^ in producing through hybridization a stone- 

 less fruit of good quality in the second or third 

 generation. 



All experiments seem to show that the stone 

 condition is, as might be expected, prepotent, or, 

 in the jNIendelian phrase, dominant. 



So in crossing an ordinary plum with a stone- 

 less one, it was to be expected that the offspring 

 of the first generation would bear stone fruit. 

 But the latent or recessive trait of stoneless- 

 ness may be expected to reappear in a certain 

 proportion of the offspring of the second 

 generation; and the stoneless fruit thus pro- 

 duced may in some cases be expected to breed 

 true. 



Such is what might be expected provided one 

 were dealing with an absolutely stoneless plum 

 as one of the progenitors. 



