THE SHASTA DAISY 



in the course of five or six years, a daisy which 

 was very obviously superior to any one of the 

 original forms as to size and beauty of flower, 

 and fully the equal of any of them in ruggedness 

 and prolific blooming. 



But the flowers were still disappointing in that 

 they lacked that quality of crystal whiteness 

 which was to be one of the chief charms of 

 my ideal daisy. So year by year I anxiously 

 inspected the rows of daisies in quest of a plant 

 bearing blooms whiter than the rest; and seeds 

 were selected only from the prize plants. 



The daisy spreads constantly, and one root 

 stalk will, if carefully divided, presently supply a 

 garden. But of course each plant grown from the 

 same root stalk is precisely like the parent, and 

 while I thus secured a large bed of daisies 

 that combined approximate whiteness with all the 

 other good qualities I was seeking, yet the purest 

 of them all did not appear to my eye unqualifiedly 

 white. 



And when my judgment was confirmed by the 

 decision of the artist, I determined to seek some 

 new method of further improvement that should 

 rid my daisies of their last trace of offending 

 pigment. 



In casting about for a means to achieve this 

 end, I learned of an Asiatic daisy known to the 



[13] 



