BURBANK'S HORTICULTURAL NOVELTIES 189 



apples as soon aa they are full grown, and shall have been 

 put upon the market. The character is nothing new. It 

 occurs in different varieties of apples and even of pears, but 

 it seems to have always been combined with some defect 

 which made the varieties useless, or at least, of inferior 

 quality. Nobody seems to have suggested the idea of com- 

 bining with this quality the character of our best varieties, 

 and so our apples and pears are still in possession of the 

 cores and their seeds. What is new and promising for this 

 most important industry is the combination of this rare and 

 almost forgotten character with the qualities of a good and 

 marketable fruit. 



One of the most interesting instances of this kind of 

 work on Burbank's farms is the white blackberry, a hybrid 

 race with abundant clusters of most delicious fruit of a per- 

 fect white. How can such a simple mark as the lack of the 

 black color evidently is, be produced by crossing ? The 

 answer is very simple. Even as in Europe a white variety 

 of the raspberry from time to time occurs, so there is found 

 in the eastern states, among the cultivated brambles, an 

 insignificant variety with small pale berries. As soon as 

 Burbank had discovered this fact, he secured some of these 

 pale yellow berries, introduced the type into his culture, and 

 crossed it with the variety called Lawton's blackberry. The 

 result was the combination of the white color with the excel- 

 lent qualities of the other parent. In a similar way, notable 

 qualities of rare or wild species have often been transferred 

 by crossing on cultivated varieties, thus giving rise to whole 

 groups of races of a new stamp. 



Another instance is the stoneless prune, one of the most 

 celebrated marvels of the Sebastopol farm. Only one of its 

 varieties is ready for the trade, but the remainder are still 

 in a period of crossing and selection. A prolonged treatment 

 must still give them the same size, fleshiness, and flavor as 



