LUTHER BURBANK 



American ox-eyes, as did my first hybrid race, 

 perhaps does not seem an anomalous product, 

 although certainly not without interest, in view of 

 the fact that its parent stocks are regarded by 

 many botanists as constituting at least two distinct 

 species. 



But the final cross, in which the Japanese plant 

 with its small flowers, inferior in everything except 

 color, was brought into the coalition, calls for 

 explanation. A general impression has long 

 prevailed that a hybrid race whether of animals 

 or of plants is likely to be more or less inter- 

 mediate between the parent races; so perhaps the 

 common expectation would have been that the 

 cross between the new hybrid race of daisies and 

 the obscure Japanese plant would result in a 

 hybrid with medium-sized flowers at best, and, 

 except possibly in the matter of whiteness of 

 blossom, an all round inferiority to the best plants 

 that I had developed. 



And in reality, there appeared the beautiful 

 mammoth Shasta, superlative in all its qualities, 

 surpassing in every respect each and all of the 

 four parent stocks from which it sprang. 



This apparently paradoxical result calls for 

 explanation. The explanation is found, so far as 

 we can explain the mysteries of life processes at 

 all, in the fact that by bringing together racial 



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