THE ALMOND 325 



anists, and biologists — with many of whom I had 

 some spirited discussions on the subject — that 

 the great individual variations occur in the second 

 and a few succeeding generations. 



To-day all these men, in common with horti- 

 culturists and biologists in general, acknowledge 

 that these variations and recombinations do 

 occur. 



Indeed, nothing more is necessary than the 

 most casual inspection of the new varieties that 

 have been developed at Santa Rosa in the 

 intervening period to establish the validity of 

 what was generally regarded as a heretical view 

 only thirty-five years ago. 



And yet the case of the first-generation hybrids 

 between the Japanese plum and the European 

 almond, showing the wide diversity just re- 

 corded, suggests that it is not always easy to lay 

 down rules of thumb. Observation of the phe- 

 nomenon of plant development in the field may 

 present complexities that make the sifting out of 

 principles difiicult. No one whose first hybridiz- 

 ing experiments happened to be performed with 

 chance hybrids of the plum and almond, and who 

 saw among his first-generation seedlings all the 

 range of forms from dwarfs to giants, would 

 have been likely to conclude that the first-gen- 

 eration hybrids are generally imiform in char- 



