THE LILIES 



which seemed to promise favorable results, 

 until my collection was the most extensive in 

 the world. These have been combined and 

 selected, and recombined and reselected, until 

 the most important results ever achieved 

 among lilies are now an embodied fact. Of 

 some of the older hybrids and seedlings I have 

 as many as a thousand bulbs of each variety 

 and have also half a million kinds yet to un- 

 fold their petals for the first time, and am 

 still planting from one to three pounds of 

 hybridized lily seed every season. The best 

 of the world's lily experts who visited my 

 grounds decided that there were at least two 

 hundred and fifty thousand lilies which were 

 distinct hybrids among the millions of lilies 

 then blooming on my grounds. 



"Can my thoughts be imagined, after so 

 many years of patient care and labor, as, walk- 

 ing among them on a dewy morning, I look 

 upon these new forms of beauty, on which 

 other eyes have never gazed? Here a plant 

 six feet high with bright yellow flowers, beside 

 it one only six inches high with darkest red 

 flowers, and, further on, one of pale straw, or 

 snowy white, or with curious dots and shad- 



109 



