LUTHER BURBANK 



mongrels that have no utility, all apparently tend- 

 ing to turn back toward the wild parent form. 

 Each member of the family has been developed 

 to its present specialized form through many 

 generations of selection alone; and the specializa- 

 tion is so great that there is small prospect of 

 securing a useful form by bringing them together. 



Such a development is not impossible, however, 

 but it would certainly be difficult to fix the new 

 type after it had been produced. 



My own experience with the cabbage tribe was 

 chiefly gained in the early day of my experimental 

 work, nearly half a century ago. I discovered that 

 it was easy to cross the cabbage with the cauli- 

 flower and with other members of the tribe; that, 

 in fact, it is necessary to grow them quite a dis- 

 tance apart in order to keep the seeds pure. But 

 the hybrids produced were all what we were 

 accustomed to describe as mongrels. Some of 

 them had small cauliflower heads of inferior 

 quality. 



At the time when these experiments were made 

 I did not fully understand the importance of the 

 second generation, and I have never found time 

 to take this line of experiment up again. 



I have had good success, however, in crossing 

 the purple-leaved cabbage with other varieties of 

 cabbage, developing thus a purple cabbage with 



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