162 LUTHER BURBANK 



that must be looked to, in a large number of 

 cases, for important development. 



The Story of a Fruitlike Tomato 



But when I came to California and found 

 opportunity for expanding the work, from time 

 to time I took up the old New England experi- 

 ments where they had been left. 



In some cases I had brought seeds with me, 

 and was able to complete under the new condi- 

 tions experiments that had been begun in New 

 England. In other cases it was necessary to 

 start anew, but with experience as a guide that 

 constituted an asset that often proved a won- 

 derful timesaver. 



In the case of the tomato, experimentation 

 was reopened on a comprehensive scale about the 

 year 1887. It was at this time that I hybridized 

 the tree tomato and the currant tomato and pro- 

 duced the interesting new form about which we 

 have just spoken. The common tomato needs no 

 description, but the currant tomato is much less 

 familiarly known. It is a plant with long, 

 slender, trailing vines and slender leaves and it 

 bears racemes of small currantlike fruit. It oc- 

 curred to me that it would be highly interesting 

 to hybridize this trailing plant with an upright, 

 compact variety of the common tomato. 



