100 



EVOLUTION AND ANIMAL LIFE 



been done in the hybridizing of lilies, a field in which many plant 

 breeders have found great difficulties. Using over half a hun- 

 dred varieties as basis of his work Burbank has produced a mar- 

 velous variety of new forms (Fig. 66). "Can my thoughts be 

 imagined/' he says, in his " New Creations " of 1893, "after so 

 many years of patient care and labor [he had been working over 

 sixteen years], as, walking among them [his new lilies] on a 

 dewy morning, I look upon these new forms of beauty, on which 



FIG. 66. An improved seedling lily with two petals. (From photograph 

 by Burbank.) 



other eyes have never gazed? Here a plant six feet high with 

 yellow flowers, beside it one only six inches high with dark 

 red flowers, and further on one of pale straw, or snowy white, 

 or with curious dots and shadings: some deliciously fragrant, 



