THE AMARYLLIS 255 



But a human generation spans a gap of some- 

 thing like a quarter of a century. As a rule the 

 most vigorous and healthy offspring are not born 

 until their parents are at least twenty-five years 

 old. So in making an analogy between the breed- 

 ing of a giant amaryllis and the breeding of a 

 giant man, it is necessary to bear in mind that ten 

 generations of the amaryllis are compassed in the 

 span of a single human generation. 



In other words, the plant developer may logi" 

 cally hope to produce with his amaryllis, in a 

 period of twenty-five years, a development com- 

 parable to that which the royal breeder of giants 

 could hope to have duplicated only in the reign 

 of some successor, perhaps of another dynasty, 

 250 years later. 



It has taken at least ten generations of hy- 

 bridizing and selection to produce my giant 

 amaryllis. 



So we may assume that if the project of the 

 Prussian king, which was inaugurated about the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, had been sys- 

 tematically followed up by his successors, there 

 might be a possibility that a ten-foot giant 

 would have appeared among the descendants of 

 the giant guardsmen about the year 2000 A. D. 



We may add, however, that it would probably 

 have been necessary to extend the search for 



