LUTHER BURBANK 
walnuts furnished the typical illustration of this 
on the most spectacular scale. 
The fruit of these almond-peach hybrids varied 
a good deal on different trees. Sometimes the 
fruit was leathery like that of the almond, but in 
other cases it was edible and quite peach-like. In 
a few cases the pulp was so fully developed thai 
it might be considered a fairly good peach. The 
seed covering was usually in the shape of an 
almond and smoother, thinner, and generally more 
elongated than the peach stone. It was hard- 
shelled and corrugated, but had not the texture 
of the peach stone. The meat within was sweet 
or slightly bitter, suggesting a rather inferior 
almond. 
Thus the fruit of this hybrid might be said to 
be fairly intermediate between the fruits of the 
parents, yet on the whole the flesh of the peach 
and the stone of the almond, respectively, tended 
to be prepotent. This is what would perhaps be 
expected, when we recall that the flesh is the spe- 
cialized modern development in the case of the 
peach, and that the seed is similarly specialized 
and developed in the case of the almond. 
We have found occasion to believe that pre- 
potency or dominance is conditioned on newness 
of development; the case of the peach-almond 
hybrid gives a measure of support to this theory. 
[78] 
