Seven ambitious brothers and how they bred a race of kings / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Seven ambitious brothers and how they bred a race of kings / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    known that a large proportion of the immigrants that have come to the United States in recent years are not the best representatives of their var- ious races. On the contrary, they include a large proportion of inferior representatives. Without dwelling at length on the matter here, it must be obvious that this introduces a compli- cation of more or less serious import. Mr. Bur- bank would not expect to improve a race of plants by introducing stock of an inferior type. As a gen- eral proposition, that seems axiomatic. But, on the other hand, it must be recalled that Mr. Bur- bank frequently finds it necessary to utilize a stock that is in many ways inferior, in order to take advantage of some one desirable quality of that stock. A case in point is furnished by the new races of wonderful stoneless plums which Mr. Burbank developed by breeding from an originally wild plum of Europe which was small in size, and so acrid as to be practically inedible, but which had the essential quality of bearing a kernel with only a remnant of a stone. This might very justly be regarded as an ab- normal plum, and as a very perverted or retro- gressive and altogether worthless example of its tribe. Yet its one quality of stonelessness—in itself an abnormality from the standpoint of plant [12]
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