LUTHER BURBANK 



has taken place in the case of the banana are not 

 matters of record. But its condition is similar to 

 that of the sugar cane and of the familiar horse- 

 radish in our gardens, both of which have been so 

 long propagated by division that they have aban- 

 doned the habit of seed formation. The banana 

 in its wild state was practically filled from end 

 to end with large, hard, bullet-like seeds or stones, 

 with just enough pulp surrounding them to make 

 the fruit attractive to birds and wild animals that 

 could not destroy the seeds. In this state it was 

 practically worthless to man. Had not a patho- 

 logical form appeared without seeds, which must 

 be cultivated solely by division, the banana would 

 be a practically useless fruit to-day. 



And, for that matter, the potato furnishes us 

 with an even more familiar illustration of the re- 

 nunciation of the most primitive and important of 

 all plant functions, that of seed bearing, which 

 has developed under cultivation within the past 

 half century. 



But among orchard fruits of temperate zones 

 the orange and the stoneless plum, as just in- 

 stanced, are the only examples of plants that have 

 been thus profoundly modified — although a seed- 

 less (but not coreless) apple and pear, in the ex- 

 perimental stage of development, have been an- 

 nounced. These examples, however, are stimu- 



[32] 



