LUTHER BURBANK 



great individual variations occur in the second 

 and a few succeeding generations. 



To-day all these men, in common with horti- 

 culturists and biologists in general, acknowledge 

 that these variations and recombinations do occur. 

 Indeed, nothing more is necessary than the most 

 casual inspection of the new varieties that have 

 been developed at Santa Rosa in the intervening 

 period to establish the validity of what was gen- 

 erally regarded as an heretical view only twenty- 

 five years ago. 



And yet the case of the first generation hybrids 

 between the Japanese plum and the European 

 almond, showing the wide diversity just recorded, 

 suggests that it is not always easy to lay down 

 rules of thumb. Observation of the phenomenon 

 of plant development in the field may present com- 

 plexities that make the sifting out of principles 

 difficult. No one whose first hybridizing experi- 

 ments happened to be performed with chance 

 hybrids of the plum and almond, and who saw 

 among his first generation seedlings all the range 

 of forms from dwarfs to giants, would have been 

 likely to conclude that the first generation hybrids 

 are generally uniform in character and that varia- 

 tion takes place in the second generation. 



Looking back now, and being able to check the 

 observation with knowledge gained through not- 



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