THE NEW WORK 



floral impossibility, to bear in mind that noth- 

 ing leaves his hand which is other than he 

 represents it to be. 



In a previous chapter mention was made of 

 the transformation of the wild American beach 

 plum, a small, bitter, comparatively worthless 

 fruit, into a fine new plum, having desirable 

 attributes and maintaining the prolific bearing 

 qualities of its hardy little ancestor. As work 

 has progressed upon this plum, it has wonder- 

 fully developed along the line of size. Mr. 

 Burbank has crossed it with a Japanese plum, 

 and, while the statement seems little short of 

 miraculous, the fact remains that the new 

 plum is fully five hundred times as large as 

 the beach plum from a seed of which he began 

 the work several years ago. It is one of the 

 most wonderful instances of development ever 

 known in plant-breeding. 



Mention was also made of a pitless or stone- 

 less plum which Mr. Burbank has produced 

 from a tiny French plum about the size of a 

 cranberry, and having only a portion of a pit. 

 It was shown that it only remained a matter 

 of time to breed the stones out of all plums 

 and prunes. In line with this comes the new 



413 



