LIITHER BURBANK 



almost certain that the coat was developed long 

 before the fruit came under cultivation. 



The fair presumption is, probably, that the an- 

 cestor of the peach, wandering from one territory 

 to another as all plants do, found "itself at a certain 

 stage of its career in an environment where the 

 conditions of moisture and wind and sunshine 

 were peculiarly trying, or where some insect or 

 fungoid or bacterial pest menaced its immature 

 fruit. And in such a case it may readily have 

 chanced that a peach that tended to produce a skin 

 of exceptionally resistant texture, one in which 

 the bloom assumed a more than usually powdery 

 or fibrous character, was given protection against 

 the enemies, and thus preserved "where fruit with 

 smoother skin was destroyed. 



Under these circumstances, the incipient fuzz 

 on the peach would serve as material for the oper- 

 ation of natural selection, and a race of peaches 

 bearing fuzzy-skinned fruit would presently sup- 

 plant the tribe of smooth-skinned peaches. 



Something like this, I suspect, we should find 

 to be the history of evolution of the fuzzy-skinned 

 peach, could we look with some necromantic mi- 

 croscope into the germinal center of the peach 

 seed and translate the marvelous history of end- 

 less generations of peaches, back Jo the beginning, 

 that is therein recorded. 



[148] 



