LUTHER BURBANK 



There is no such microscope as this, of course. 



But we can, in a sense, perform the same necro- 

 mantic feat, and lay bare the mysteries of the 

 history of the evolution of the race of peaches, in 

 a quite different manner. 



If you have read the earlier chapters of this 

 work, you will know that the method I have in 

 mind is the familiar one of causing the germ 

 plasm of the peach, with its weird record of past 

 events, to blend with the germ plasm of another 

 tribe of plants having a somewhat different his- 

 tory; in order that the conflict of tendencies thus 

 brought about (as we used to say; or the blending 

 of hereditary factors, to use the popular phrase of 

 the moment), shall bring to the surface and make 

 tangible in the hybrids of a new generation, the 

 traits that were submerged and hidden in the in- 

 dividual plant before us. 



And when this familiar yet no less wonderful 

 test is applied, we learn, among other things, that 

 the peach which now holds to its fuzzy coating so 

 tenaciously, at one time had a cheek as smooth as 

 that of any other fruit. For among the offspring 

 that appear as the result of blending peach strains, 

 there now and again is one that bears smooth 

 fruit. 



Moreover, the smooth fruit that thus appears is 

 closely similar to another fruit which, from its 



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