LUTHER BURBANK 



there must have been ancestors of the prune that 

 grew far to the north, for the plum is a hardy 

 plant. Among some of the remote and now 

 untraceable ancestral strains, there were doubtless 

 some that produced their fruit at least as early as 

 the first of August, perhaps even earlier. 



And although (when interbreeding occurred) 

 the hereditary tendency to early fruiting had been 

 made subordinate to the late-fruiting tendencies 

 of other races of plums that had grown in milder 

 climates, yet the potentialities of early fruiting 

 were never altogether lost. 



Hence among the multitude of seedlings that 

 were produced by my hybridizing experiments, 

 this trait, along with a multitude of other sub- 

 merged ancestral traits, was now able to make 

 itself manifest. And it was my task, by a 

 comparatively simple process of selection, to 

 make sure that the character was preserved. 



The matter is perhaps made a little clearer if 

 we reflect that in any race of domestic plants, 

 there is a considerable range of variation as to 

 size of fruit, abundance of bearing, and time of 

 fruitage. Such variations represent, as we have 

 pointed out, the varying traits of diverse strains 

 of ancestors. But it must be observed that there 

 are always some clearly defined limits beyond 

 which variation does not readily go. 



[262] 



