LUTHER BURBANK 



attempted, it would be unavailing unless vast 

 companies of seedlings were preserved for the 

 term of years necessary to bring them to fruitage. 



When one is concerned solely with numbers, 

 or with such tangible qualities as color of hair in 

 the case of Professor Castle's guinea pigs, or color 

 of feather with Professor Davenport's fowls, it 

 is an easy matter to check results, because the 

 creatures under investigation manifest the quali- 

 ties that are being tested from the moment of 

 birth, or develop them at a very early age. 



But with plants the case is obviously different. 

 Whereas we may judge something as to the 

 character of fruit that a seedling will ultimately 

 bear from observation of the seedling itself, yet 

 for purposes of scientific record such predictions 

 would be considered as worse than worthless. 

 To know what percentage of seedlings of a given 

 generation have really progressed toward the ideal 

 of a sugar prune that will ripen August 1st instead 

 of September 1st, let us say, it would be necessary 

 to let all the seedlings grow for several years, or 

 at the very least to wait two or three years for 

 the grafted cions from each seedling to come to 

 fruitage. 



The practical experimenter, seeking results, 

 cannot possibly work in this way when he works 

 on a large scale. 



[256] 



