LUTHER BURBANK 



the material of the ordinary potato, because the 

 tomato and potato are cousins. 



But the modification had been great enough to 

 transform the tuber, and make it a deformed and 

 perverted thing, more or less comparable, doubt- 

 less, to the tubers of some ancestral race from 

 which both the tomato and potato have developed. 



The extraordinary thing, perhaps, was that the 

 tomato should have manufactured starch in such 

 quantity as to have supplied material for even 

 these dwarf tubers, inasmuch as the normal tomato 

 plant produces no tubers of its own. But seem- 

 ingly the buds designed to produce tubers on the 

 potato roots made an incessant appeal that the 

 vine above could not resist, even though it was 

 able to fulfil but imperfectly the specifications for 

 a potato tuber. 



AERIAL POTATOES 



Meantime, what of the potato tops that were 

 grafted on the stem of the tomato ? How did these 

 prosper? 



Here, it is obvious, were complications of a 

 different order. The tomato vine obviously could 

 bear no tomatoes because it had no tops. Mean- 

 time the potato vine was equally handicapped as 

 to the production of subterranean tubers since it 

 had no roots of its own kind. 



But the tomato roots of course sent up their 



[136] 



