NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



potatoes varied much in a given hill, rendering 

 them unsatisfactory for marketing without 

 selection. Mr. Burbank will obviate this by 

 making them all practically of the same size. 

 Uniformity will also be more satisfactory for 

 cooking purposes. 



While the potato and the tomato are very 

 closely allied in family ties, being, indeed, not 

 far separated blood relation, they are as far 

 apart as the poles when it comes to any satis- 

 factory amalgamation. Mr. Burbank has found 

 many similarly strange instances where two 

 plants which, by all the probabilities, should 

 be the very ones to be most hospitable to each 

 other, utterly refuse to join. 



But some very remarkable results developed 

 in his attempts to cross the two. For ex- 

 ample, he has produced tomatoes from the 

 seeds of plants pollinated from potato pollen 

 only. He has produced what he has aptly 

 called "aerial potatoes," most peculiar in form, 

 growing on a Burbank potato vine grafted on 

 a Ponderosa tomato plant. These open-air 

 potatoes are of many different shapes and sizes, 

 as well as colors. Some of them assume gro- 

 tesque forms and appear quite like Httle pigs. 



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