Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/225

Rh

inside the capsule. All seedlings always vary more or less. With the same parent, one fruit may be two and one half or more times the diameter of the other, of a different color, flavor or differing in almost all respects. "There is no prepotency of male or female as such. Prepotency depends wholly on heredity. We can not rely on the stoneless types being prepotent, but a certain number of trees producing stoneless fruit usually come from crossing them with those having stones. The prepotency to produce a stone, or a half stone, having been more thoroughly fixed by ages of stone-producing trees, will perhaps be about ninety-nine times out of one hundred. But other things being equal, there is absolutely no balance in favor of either sex. This may be set down as fixed."

With plum-almond crosses there is every kind of variation in the flowers. Some have all stamens, some have many petals or none, some never open, and some have pistils only.