CHAPTER VI 
THE LILIES 
@y URELY, since the world began, Nature 
never presented a stranger spectacle than 
that seen several years ago on Mr. Bur- 
bank’s proving grounds at Sebastopol, when a 
hundred thousand seedling hybrid lilies were 
in blossom at the same time. And never 
before did so vast a volume of perfume,— 
there is no other figure to express it,—rise 
toward the summer sky. So intense was the 
fragrance that ranchmen a mile away could 
distinctly detect it, while all the country round 
about and the little town that lies at the 
entrance to this wondrous place was saturated 
with the odor. It was a strange composite 
fragrance, too, a thousand scents blended into 
one ; for with the tens upon tens of thousands 
of different lilies came not only a well-nigh 
infinite variety of flower, but an indescribably 
rare and complex odor unlike anything the 
world had known before. 
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