LUTHER BURBANK 



Neither Wickson nor Santa Rosa nor Formosa 

 nor Beauty plums would have the slightest value 

 as additions to the orchard of the prune grower. 

 The smallest and the poorest prune in the orchard 

 would be preferred. 



Yet the qualities that these educated plums lack 

 are very few. Or, stated otherwise, the points of 

 education that the prune has acquired, over and 

 above other plums, are few. But they are abso- 

 lutely essential. 



The qualities in question are simply these: A 

 capacity to produce a large percentage of sugar 

 and store it in the juices of the fruit; and, sec- 

 ondly, a capacity to produce a skin-covering hav- 

 ing a peculiar quality of cracking in just the right 

 way when the fruit is plunged into an alkali bath. 

 Granted these qualities, any plum is a prune; 

 lacking them, no plum is a prune of value. 



As to the varying degrees in which the qualities 

 may be attained by different races of prunes, we 

 shall have more to say in a moment. 

 GOING BACK TO THE BLANKET 



In order to get a clear view of the matter, it 

 will be well for us to make inquiry as to just how 

 the prune came to take on the particular kind of 

 education that now gives it distinction. By so 

 doing we shall perhaps be enabled to understand 

 better why it is that the prune finds it so easy to 



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