LUTHER BURBANK 



is as definitely revealed when the plant is an inch 

 high as it will be when it has attained mature 

 growth. 



But, on the contrary, our selection made in the 

 hope of securing plants that would bear spineless 

 fruit of excellent quality may prove eventually to 

 have been hopelessly faulty. After waiting three 

 or four or five years we may discover that the 

 plants on which our hopes had been chiefly based 

 bear fruit as spiny as that borne by their ances- 

 tor whose habits we are attempting to enable the 

 plant to shake off. 



Nevertheless, the work of removing the spines 

 from the fruit of the cactus has progressed to a 

 stage where the spicules are not only reduced in 

 size, but are so loosely attached that they may be 

 readily brushed from the fruit with a wisp of 

 grass. And the plants under observation include 

 many in which the tendency to drop the spicules 

 from the fruit has advanced progressively, war- 

 ranting the confident expectation that in the next 

 generation there will be some that will present 

 fruit altogether smooth. 



I have every expectation that when the plants 

 of the most recent generation come to bearing this 

 year, there will be some that produce fruit as 

 smooth-skinned as the slabs of the mother plant 

 itself. 



[216] 



