306 LUTHER BURBANK 



The Darwin potato is a slender, erect-growing 

 plant, bearing a tuber the flesh of which is usu- 

 ally bright yellow in color, and much subject to 

 decay. In its general appearance, also, the plant 

 is quite different from the ordinary potato, and 

 it commonly bears a seed ball that is much larger 

 than the seed ball that the cultivated potato 

 bears ; the seeds themselves, however, being much 

 smaller. 



Seedlings of the Darwin potato were grown 

 and improved by selection until they produced 

 tubers of enormous size, some of them weighing 

 two to two and a half pounds. Then hybridizing 

 experiments were carried out between the Dar- 

 win and the common potato. 



More than half a million hybrid seedlings of 

 these two species were raised. 



The Darwin potato is much more fixed in its 

 characters than the cultivated potato, and these 

 characteristics proved largely dominant in the 

 progeny of the first generation, this dominance 

 extending to the tubers themselves, which re- 

 semble their wild ancestor in size, color, irregu- 

 larity of form, deep eyes, and tendency to decay. 



Eight-Foot Vines 



There were, however, some astonishing anom- 

 alies manifested by the hybrid progeny. Some 



