igo PLANT-BREEDING 



other prunes have. The fruits we saw were of a clear blue 

 color and very attractive, though yet small. One may bite 

 completely through the middle of the prune, no stone being 

 met with. Inside of the plum is the seed, like an almond 

 in its shell, and with a fine taste like that of an almond, but 

 without any hard covering. It is surrounded only by a pale 

 jelly with some stray remnants of hard stony material, 

 which do not offer any resistance to the teeth or to the knife. 



Fig. 60. The improved stoneless prune. The pit is not surrounded by 

 any stony material, but by a jelly. 



All around the jelly is the clear, greenish, and juicy fruit 

 flesh, exactly as in an ordinary plum. The amount of stony 

 remnants varies greatly along with the other characters. 

 Some hybrids are more stony, others less. The latter will be 

 chosen, in order to be crossed with large, highly flavored 

 prunes, so as to obtain a superior quality, or they may be 

 crossed with all other existing cultivated varieties in order 

 to transmit the lack of a stone to all of them, and so ulti- 

 mately to replace all the present varieties by correspond- 



