OBTAINING VARIATIONS 107 



forth of a flower of an unpredicted color, or the 

 development of a form of which one hitherto had 

 no conception. 



In a field of cultivated poppies, for example, 

 where there were millions of specimens, all of 

 substantially identical color, so that the field 

 made a blazing sheet of yellow, I have come upon 

 a single blossom of purest white. 



To find this white blossom, isolated among the 

 millions, is an experience that repays one for 

 years of earnest effort and makes amends for 

 almost any antecedent disappointment. 



It was such a chance discovery as we have seen 

 that gave the world the wonderful new race 

 of white Watsonias. Quite possibly the white 

 flower that Mr. Arderne found among the colony 

 of reddish pink ones may have been the only one 

 of its color among a million, or perhaps ten 

 million, of its fellows for miles around. But this 

 single atypical individual chanced to be discov- 

 ered, and its progeny to-day are found by thou- 

 sands, even by hundreds of thousands, in the 

 gardens and greenhouses, not alone of its native 

 home in South Africa, but of all parts of Europe 

 and warmer regions of America. 



The reader will recall that I have raised these 

 white Watsonias by hundreds of thousands. 

 Their strains were mingled in the quarter million 



