A BACKWARD GLANCE 
golden-yellow. In spite of individual differences, 
this color is the characteristic of the kind. It is a 
fixed characteristic, dating back at least to the 
time when California, because of the poppy 
covered hills, received its name—the land of fire— 
from the early Spanish navigators that ventured 
up and down the coast. 
Out of the billion billions of wild poppies that 
have grown, each million has no doubt contained 
its freaks or its “sports”—its few experimental 
individuals which Nature has given the tendency 
to break away from the characteristics of their 
fellows. 
Yet in the history of the California poppy 
family, as far back as we can trace, none of these 
freaks or “sports” had ever achieved its object. 
Among the “sports” which Mr. Burbank found 
in the million poppies he grew were one with a 
crimson tendency, one with a white tendency, and 
one with a lemon-yellow, fiery-red tendency. 
If Mr. Burbank had not intervened, these 
freaks, quite likely, would have perished without 
offspring. 
But by nurturing them, separating them and 
saving their seeds, within a few brief seasons he 
was able to produce three new kinds of the 
California poppy. 
Each kind had all of the parent poppy charac- 
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