LUTHER BURBANK 



tested fully the possibilities of variation of the 

 balloon-flower. 



And indeed, even when these crosses have been 

 made, there will still remain possibilities to invite 

 the plant experimenter. For although the balloon- 

 flower stands in a genus by itself, there are of 

 course other genera that are not very distantly 

 related in the Campanula family, to which the 

 flower belongs. The balloon-flower is often spo- 

 ken of as the Chinese bellflower, and with entire 

 propriety, inasmuch as its nearest relatives are 

 the European and American bellflowers, of which 

 there are several familiar species, the best known, 

 perhaps, being the one called popularly the hare- 

 bell or bluebell, and the Canterbury bell. 



It is quite supposable that it might be possible 

 to hybridize the Chinese flower with one or an- 

 other of these European or American bellflowers. 



And in that event it is not to be doubted that 

 the hybrid race would show new possibilities of 

 variation and, by combining ancestral traits that 

 have not been blended since remote geological 

 periods, if at all, we should develop among the 

 progeny of the balloon-flower races that would, in 

 all probability, differ so radically from the parent 

 form as scarcely to be recognizable as having any 

 relationship whatever with the plant with which 

 our experiment began. 



[36] 



