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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