LUTHER BURBANK 



together two strains, each carrying its galaxies 



of more or less antagonistic characters, it is not 



altogether unlike scattering the letters of the 



alphabet in a whirlwind and expecting them to 



fall together in some chance eddy in such a way as 



to spell out some specified word. 



MARKING PROGRESS 



I was not unmindful of the difficulties of the 

 project, but nevertheless the obvious need of a 

 better prune than California growers had been 

 able to secure by importation appealed to me from 

 the time of my first coming to the state; and when 

 I undertook plant experimentation on a large 

 scale, the development of the prune was one of 

 the things that first engaged my attention. 



This work began about 1885, when I was grow- 

 ing seedlings of the European plum, Prunas do- 

 mestica, from which practically all the prunes have 

 been developed. 



I have told in an earlier chapter of the success 

 that ultimately attained the effort, through the 

 development of the sugar prune. Here I wish to 

 tell a little more at length of some of the tentative 

 efforts and partial successes that paved the way 

 for the final realization of an ideal. 



As already told, I began experiments by hy- 

 bridizing the French prune with the larger and 

 handsomer but less sugary variety known as 



[98] 



