180 LUTHER BURBANK 



But the modification had been great enough 

 to transform the tuber, and make it a deformed 

 and perverted thing, more or less comparable, 

 doubtless, to the tubers of some ancestral race 

 from which both the tomato and potato have 

 developed. 



The extraordinary thing, perhaps, was that 

 the tomato should have manufactured starch in 

 such quantity as to have supplied material for 

 even these dwarf tubers, inasmuch as the normal 

 tomato plant produces no tubers of its own. But 

 seemingly the buds designed to produce tubers 

 on the potato roots made an incessant appeal that 

 the vine above could not resist, even though it 

 was able to fulfill but imperfectly the specifica- 

 tions for a potato tuber. 



Aerial Potatoe 



Meantime, what of the potato tops that were 

 grafted on the stem of the tomato? How did 

 these prosper? 



Here, it is obvious, were complications of a 

 different order. The tomato vine obviously 

 could bear no tomatoes because it had no 

 tops. Meantime the potato vine was equally 

 handicapped as to the production of sub- 

 terranean tubers since it had not roots of its 

 own kind. 



